We Are One and Many: Weekly Summary

Sunday
Each of us reading this meditation is a different and unique person. And yet at the same time, we are not so different and unique. The mystics go to deeper levels to realize that we are more one than we are many. —Richard Rohr

Monday
Who I will be is deeply related to who you are. In other words, we are each impacted by the circumstances that impact those around us. What hurts you hurts me. What heals you heals me. —Jacqui Lewis

Tuesday
Ubuntu is about reaching out to our fellow men and women, through whom we might just find the comfort, contentment and sense of belonging we crave. Ubuntu tells us that individuals are nothing without other human beings. It encompasses everyone, regardless of race, creed or color. It embraces our differences and celebrates them. —Mungi Ngomane

Wednesday
We are each a God-carrier, a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, indwelt by God the holy and most blessed Trinity. To treat one such as less than this is not just wrong. It is as if we were to spit in the face of God. —Desmond Tutu

Thursday
God clearly loves diversity. All we need to do is look at the animal world, or the world under the sea, or each human being: who of us looks exactly alike? Is there any evidence to show where, in all creation, that God prefers uniformity? —Fr. Richard Rohr

Friday
One basic discovery was constantly surfacing—meaningful experiences of unity among peoples were more compelling than all that divided and separated. —Howard Thurman

Examining Our Stories

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis believes that truthful storytelling can help us create the diverse and united community that God dreams for us. Today we share her prompts that invite us to reflect on the times we “othered” or were “othered” by people different from us. You may want to reflect on the prompts through prayer, journaling, or in conversation:

My parents’ stories, my own story, and the salvific story of God’s commitment to heal our souls and heal the world have caused me to see a world free of racism, and to imagine my role in creating that. . . . In order to see what God is up to, in order to perceive God’s vision, we must not only exegete the Scriptures to find God’s call and plan; we must also exegete our own stories, examining them for vivid glimpses of holy imagination and also for blind spots that might hinder our ability to see what God sees for us.

What is your story? . . .

Recall the first time you were “othered” or rejected for being you. What happened?
What did your family of origin teach you about race/ethnicity?
What did your family of origin teach you about gender and sexuality?
How has your understanding of racial/ethnic identity changed over time? How has it remained the same?
How has your understanding of sexuality and gender changed over time? How has it remained the same?
Talk about “class” in your story. Where have you been “othered” or othered another because of class differences?
When did you first other another for their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality?
Is there something that needs to be confessed, forgiven, or changed around race, ethnicity, or class in your life?
Is there something that needs to be confessed, forgiven, or changed around gender and sexuality in your life?

If life in your faith community is an ongoing story, what is the title of the current chapter? What is the title five years from now? Write the title of three episodes that must happen in order to change the story.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Reference:
Jacqueline J. Lewis and John Janka, The Pentecost Paradigm: Ten Strategies for Becoming a Multiracial Congregation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 18, 19–20.

Explore Further. . .

Read Brian McLaren on the need for a more hopeful and inclusive story.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Barbara Holmes, Untitled 24 (detail), 2021, photograph, United States, used with permission. Warren K. Leffler, View of the huge crowd, 1963 (detail), photograph, public domain. Warren K. Leffler, Demonstrators sit, 1963 (detail), photograph, public domain. Jenna Keiper and Leslye Colvin, 2021, triptych art, United States.

The creative team at CAC sent a single-use camera to core teacher Dr. Barbara Holmes as part of an exploration into contemplative photography. Her photos are featured here together with historical images in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Humanity is One although we are as diverse as flowers in a field. There is power in many different individuals coming together for one purpose—the March on Washington reminds us that together we have the capacity to be a transformative body and force for change.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

The Experience of God Unites Us

CAC teacher Barbara Holmes recounts her visit to Fellowship Church, a visionary, multi-racial church co-founded in 1944 by Howard Thurman and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman. This faith community is a lived example of how diversity can be honored and held together by a shared experience of God:

On Russian Hill in San Francisco, in the midst of a densely populated neighborhood, is the building that was the site of . . . the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (or Fellowship Church). There, the mystic and contemplative Howard Thurman and his wife, Sue Bailey, began an interfaith worship experience. In the fall of 2002, I journeyed to this place. It was a pilgrimage of sorts. . . .

Here, contemplative practices are given priority. Time is devoted to a guided meditation, which is an element of congregational life that is unusual in black worship. But then, this is not black worship—this is just worship. . . .

It was odd and wonderful at the end of the service to watch the embraces and connections across chasms of race, gender, and social devastation. In my pew, an elderly African American gentleman extended a hand to an Anglo male sitting in the seat next to me. No matter what the older man did, the younger man would not shake his hand. Instead of turning away to end the embarrassing situation, the older gentleman kept asking, “Why not?” with his hand insistently extended. “I can’t,” the younger mumbled nervously . . . “I can’t because my hand sweats too much.” The older man patted him on the back and began to walk away, but thought better of it and returned to embrace the young man. How wonderful, I thought. When had I been in a predominantly Anglo or black congregation where the people were so different that this kind of thing could occur? [1]

Howard Thurman (1900–1981) writes about the conviction that shared worship and encounter with divine presence could unite diverse people:

Sue and I knew that all our accumulated experiences of the past had given us two crucial gifts for this undertaking: a profound conviction that meaningful and creative experiences between peoples can be more compelling than all the ideas, concepts, faiths, fears, ideologies, and prejudices that divide them; and absolute faith that if such experiences can be multiplied and sustained over a time interval of sufficient duration any barrier that separates one person from another can be undermined and eliminated. We were sure that the ground of such meaningful experiences could be provided by the widest possible associations around common interest and common concerns. . . . One basic discovery was constantly surfacing—meaningful experiences of unity among peoples were more compelling than all that divided and separated. The sense of Presence was being manifest which in time would bring one to his or her own altar stairs leading each in his [or her] own way like Jacob’s ladder from earth to heaven. [2]

References:
[1] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017) 86, 87, 88.

[2] Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 148.

Explore Further. . .

Read Jacqui Lewis on God’s vision for multi-racial worship.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Story from Our Community:

Here I sit, in the highest foothills of the Rockies. I’ve eaten my breakfast, read my devotions, and it’s time for my 15 minutes of meditation. It’s so hard to keep my eyes closed while God is before me in every bird and blade of grass. I see God in every living thing until I go up the hill where I’m spraying away thistle. I’ve always had trouble with the challenge of appreciating ‘oneness’ when I come to something, someone, or some idea I don’t like.
—Joyce S.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Divine Diversity and Oneness

During a CAC conference on the Trinity, Richard spoke about how the three-in-one God shows God’s love for diversity:

God clearly loves diversity. All we need to do is look at the animal world, or the world under the sea, or each human being: who of us looks exactly alike? We are always different. Is there any evidence to show where, in all creation, that God prefers uniformity? But we consistently confuse uniformity with spiritual unity.

The mystery that we’re talking about is revealed in the Trinity: the three are maintained as diverse, different and distinct, and yet they are radically “One”! The foundational philosophical problem has been called the problem of the one and the many. How can there be one and how can there be many? In the Trinity, we have the paradox at least metaphorically resolved. But most of us don’t easily know how to be both diverse and united. We want to make everybody the same. And the church has become more and more an exclusionary institution, instead of a great banquet feast to which Jesus constantly invites sinners and outcasts.

The ego is much more comfortable with uniformity, people around me who look and talk like me, and don’t threaten my boundaries. But in the presence of the Trinitarian God, God totally lets go of boundaries for the sake of the other. Each accepts full acceptance by the other.

In an article for Sojourners, Richard writes about how understanding the Trinity can heal our tendency to “other” people who are different than ourselves:

I believe racism is often rooted in [a] distorted view of divinity; rather than reflecting the One who created all things in God’s own “image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26–27), we instead make God into a mascot who, as Anne Lamott brilliantly quips, hates all the same people we do. [1] . . .

It took them [early church fathers] three centuries to make full sense out of Jesus’ often-confusing language about what he named “Father,” how he understood himself, and what he named the “Holy Spirit.” Our common form of dualistic thinking just could not process such three-fold and one-ness evocations at the same time. . . .

The Godhead itself maintains separate identity between Three, with an absolutely unique kind of unity, which is the very shape of Divine Oneness.

God’s pattern and goal has never been naïve uniformity but radical diversity (1 Corinthians 12:4–6) maintained in absolute unity by “a perfect love” that infinitely self-empties and infinitely outpours—at the same time.

This Divine pattern is, of course, most beautifully revealed in “all the array [pleroma, or fullness] of creation” (Genesis 2:1). God is forever “making room” and “infilling”; this is the Way of the Flow. This is, in our finite understandings, an utterly new logic and is the foundational template for the success of the human project for those ready to embrace at the level of experience what they already confess in [their] creeds. [2]

References:
[1] Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 220.

[2] Richard Rohr, “How God as Trinity Dissolves Racism,” Sojourners, August 25, 2016.

Adapted from Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeault, The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity, disc 3 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2004), DVD, CD, MP3 download.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard, Barbara Holmes, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and more on Contemplation and Racism.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Each a God-Carrier

The late Bishop Desmond Tutu understood our interdependence with each other as part of what it means to live in the image of God:

God has created us, upholding us in being from moment to moment, providing us with our very existence. . . . Despite everything that conspires to deny this truth, each one of us is of immense worth, of infinite value because God loved us. That is why [God] created us. Thus our value is intrinsic to who we are. It comes with the package of being human. It depends neither on extrinsic attributes such as ethnicity and skin color nor on our achievement, however that may be computed. Our worth stems from the fact that we exist only because of the divine love. . . . [Richard: As Bishop Tutu told me when I met him, “We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!”]

We are each a God-carrier, a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, indwelt by God the holy and most blessed Trinity.

To treat one such as less than this is not just wrong. . . . It is veritably blasphemous and sacrilegious. It is as if we were to spit in the face of God. Consequently injustice, racism, exploitation, oppression are to be opposed not as a political task but as a response to a religious, a spiritual imperative. Not to oppose these manifestations of evil would be tantamount to disobeying God.

God has created us for interdependence as God has created us in God’s image—the image of a divine fellowship of the holy and blessed Trinity. . . God has created us to be different in order that we can realize our need of one another. There is an African idiom: “A person is a person through other persons.” I learn how to be human through association with other human beings. . . . [1]

Like Desmond Tutu, CAC teacher Brian McLaren sees the Trinity as offering a healing vision of the world, in which we create holy community that overturns categories of “us” and “them”:

This Trinitarian vision of God helps us imagine a relational universe of one-anotherness, community-in-unity, unity-in-community, being-in-interbeing, where benevolence toward the other is at home, and hostility toward the other is foreign, invasive, out of place. . . .

God-with-God in community leads us to envision God-with-us in community. And that vision in turn dares us to imagine God-with-them in community. And that expansive vision invites us higher still: to envision God-with-us-and-with-them in community. This approach to the Trinity need not be a litmus test used to legitimize us and delegitimize them. Instead, it can be a gift, offered to others like a poem, not an ultimatum—given not to require assent-leading-to-acceptance or dissent-leading-to-condemnation, but rather to inspire us to reverence otherliness as a theological attribute. At that moment, Trinitarianism becomes not only a healing doctrine but a healing practice. [2]

References:
[1] Desmond M. Tutu, “My Credo,” in Living Philosophies: The Reflections of Some Eminent Men and Women of Our Time, ed. Clifton Fadiman (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 234, 235. Note: Minor changes made to incorporate inclusive language.

[2] Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World (New York: Jericho Books, 2012), 130, 131–132.

Explore Further. . .

Listen to Brian McLaren and CAC staff discuss social biases on the podcast “Learning How to See.”
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Story from Our Community:

As an artist, painter, and maker, meditation helps me realize that my own work seems best when I create with love and awe for Oneness. I feel any talent I have is a gift from God and to create is my own way of praying.
—Suzy K.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Members of One Diverse Family

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished. —Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness

Author and activist Mungi Ngomane follows the passion of her recently deceased grandfather, the South African bishop and human rights activist Desmond Tutu, believing that ubuntu provides a unifying and hopeful vision for our diverse world:

Ubuntu is a way of life from which we can all learn. . . . Originating from a Southern African philosophy, it encompasses all our aspirations about how to live life well, together. We feel it when we connect with other people and share a sense of humanity; when we listen deeply and experience an emotional bond; when we treat ourselves and other people with the dignity they deserve. . . .

I was raised in a community that taught me ubuntu as one of my earliest lessons. My grandfather, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, explained the essence of ubuntu as, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.”

In my family, we were brought up to understand that a person who has ubuntu is one whose life is worth emulating. The bedrock of the philosophy is respect, for yourself and for others. So if you’re able to see other people, even strangers, as fully human you will never be able to treat them as disposable or without worth. . . .

Ubuntu teaches us to also look outside ourselves to find answers. It’s about seeing the bigger picture; the other side of the story. Ubuntu is about reaching out to our fellow men and women, through whom we might just find the comfort, contentment and sense of belonging we crave. Ubuntu tells us that individuals are nothing without other human beings. It encompasses everyone, regardless of race, creed or color. It embraces our differences and celebrates them. [1]

Desmond Tutu taught that ubuntu celebrates our diverse interdependence and is related to the wholeness or peace that Jesus brings:

We find that we are placed in a delicate network of vital relationship with the Divine, with my fellow human beings and with the rest of creation. . . . We are meant then to live as members of one family, the human family exhibiting a rich diversity of attributes and gifts in our differing cultures as members of different races and coming from different milieus—and precisely because of this diversity, made for interdependence. . . .

The peace we want is something positive and dynamic. In the Hebrew it is called shalom which refers to wholeness, integrity; it means well-being, physical and spiritual. It means the abundance of life which Jesus Christ promised he had brought. It all has to do with a harmonious coexistence with one’s neighbors in a wholesome environment allowing persons to become more fully human. [2]

References:
[1] Mungi Ngomane, Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way (New York: Harper Design, 2020), 13, 14.

[2] Desmund Tutu, “The Quest for Peace,” address, Johannesburg, August 1986, quoted in Michael Battle, Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me (New York: Seabury Books, 2009), 83.

Explore Further. . .

Read Desmond Tutu on “an economy of grace.”
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

The Spirit of Ubuntu

CAC friend Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis finds inspiration in the African concept of “ubuntu,” which means “I am who I am because we are who we are.” The ubuntu vision of relatedness can provide healing in the midst our many current crises and divisions:

Even before COVID-19 showed up in our global family, we were living in what I call “hot-mess times.” In our current context, race and ethnicity, caste and color, gender and sexuality, socioeconomic status and education, religion and political party have all become reasons to divide and be conquered by fear and rancor. . . . Put simply, we are in a perilous time, and the answer to the question “Who are we to be?” will have implications for generations to come.

We have a choice to make. We can answer this question with diminished imagination, by closing ranks with our tribe and hiding from our human responsibility to heal the world. Or we can answer the question of who we are to be another way: We can answer it in the spirit of ubuntu. The concept comes from the Zulu phrase Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which literally means that a person is a person through other people. Another translation is, “I am who I am because we are who we are.” . . . With this in mind, who I will be is deeply related to who you are. In other words, we are each impacted by the circumstances that impact those around us. What hurts you hurts me. What heals you heals me. What causes you joy causes me to rejoice, and what makes you sad also causes me to weep.

By channeling the ancient wisdom of ubuntu, we can engineer a badly needed love revolution to rise up out of the ashes of our current reality. . . . The empathy that grows from listening to others, from connecting with our neighbors, and from loving our neighbors as we love ourselves can define the courses of action we take. [1]

Father Richard finds a similarly unifying perspective in the spirituality of Julian of Norwich (1343–c. 1416). He writes:

The divisions, dichotomies, and dualisms of the world can only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level: personal, relational, social, political, cultural, in inter-religious dialogue, and spirituality in particular. A transformed people unite all within themselves, so they can then do the same in the world. [2]

My favorite Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich, used the Old English term “oneing” to describe what happens between God and the soul. As Julian put it, “By myself I am nothing at all; but in general I am, I hope, in the oneing of love . . . for it is in this oneing that the life of all people consists.” She also wrote, “The charity of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another” and “In the sight of God, all humans are oned, and one person is all people.” [3]

References:
[1] Jacqui Lewis, Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World (New York: Harmony Books, 2021), 11–12.

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spring within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2016),39.

[3] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapters 9, 65, 51. Note: Minor changes made to incorporate inclusive language.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard’s book The Naked Now on learning to see as the mystics see.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Story from Our Community:

I once did a meditation on the icon of the Trinity. I felt like I was a fountain being slowly drawn into the center. The process repeated until I was in total sync with the Trinity that I was no longer aware of myself. I am absorbed into the world around me and feel a deepening bond that I was unaware of until now. I’m aware of a oneness with all and in that unity, I hold everything in prayer for Divine Grace and Healing.
—Julie D.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

We Are All Christ’s Body

In this homily based on 1 Corinthians 12, Father Richard shows how the apostle Paul understood our unity in diversity through the metaphor of the Body of Christ:

Humanity consistently has to face the problem of unity and diversity. We’re not very good at understanding it. That’s why we continue to struggle in our society with rampant racism, along with sexism, homophobia, classism, nationalism, and more. We habitually choose our smaller groups, because we don’t know how to belong to a larger group. That demands too much letting go.

The apostle Paul writes: “The body is one, although it has many parts; and all the parts of the body, though many, are still one body. And so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). Here Paul develops the doctrine known as the Body of Christ. This isn’t easy for Westerners to understand, because we are deeply trained in cultural individualism. So much so, we don’t even recognize our lack. When we try to be holy without one another, it doesn’t work—because only the Whole is Holy. Individually we are too small, too fragile, too broken to fully represent the Mystery of Christ.

Paul continues by emphasizing unity: “For in One Spirit, we were all baptized into One Body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons. We were all given of One Spirit to drink” (1 Corinthians 12:13). In this verse, Paul tears down notions of nationalism, classes, and castes.

Then he honors diversity: “The Body is not a single part, but many” (1 Corinthians 12:14). Each of us reading this meditation is a different and unique person. And yet at the same time, we are not so different and unique. The mystics go to deeper levels to realize that we are more one than we are many. When we can move from “I” to “we,” our conversion begins. Most of us start by thinking “It’s all about me!” Only generous, unconditional love can free us from this self-isolation—but for many this only comes later.

We often ask our isolated selves, “Am I perfect enough? Good enough?” Yes, you are perfect and good enough! Yet as individuals, we are too fragile, too insecure, too small, to bear the weight of glory. And also too little and weak to bear the burden of sin.

We are corporately quite stupid and sinful. I wrote a small book trying to show that Paul actually teaches a most subversive thing: Evil is corporately agreed upon as good before individuals ever dare to do it. [1] We all cooperate in absurd systems. When we humbly and honestly recognize this, we learn much more readily how to join hands with one another. We’re trained to compare and compete; that’s the nature of capitalism. The gospel undercuts that by saying, first of all, that we are one; and secondly, that each of us is a unique individual. Holding our oneness and individuality together reveals the Christian mystery: “You are all Christ’s Body, and individually, you are parts of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).

References:
[1] See Richard Rohr, What Do We Do with Evil? The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2019).

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Unity Is Created Out of Diversity,” homily, January 27, 2019.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard Rohr, Micky ScottBey Jones, John Dear, and more on “Unity and Diversity” in Oneing.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

We Are One and Many: Weekly Summary

The Experience of God Unites Us

Divine Diversity and Oneness

Each a God-Carrier

Members of One Diverse Family

The Spirit of Ubuntu

We Are All Christ’s Body

Category Archive

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Stay connected

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We Are One and Many: Weekly Summary

The Experience of God Unites Us

Divine Diversity and Oneness

Each a God-Carrier

Members of One Diverse Family

The Spirit of Ubuntu

We Are All Christ’s Body

Category Archive

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