Encountering God 
A Sermon 
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire

Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton

2/7/2021


Reading:

An Excerpt from “The Creative Encounter” By Howard Thurman

...The central fact in religious experience is the awareness of meeting God. The encounter; sometimes, a confrontation; and sometimes, a sense of Presence. What is insisted upon, however, without regard to the term used, is that in the experience defined as religious, the individual is seen as being exposed to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning, ne plus ultra being, in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation.
...The mind apprends the whole --the experience is beyond or inclusive of the discursive. It is not other than the discursive, but somehow it is inclusive of the discursive.



Sermon:

In Judaism there are seven names for God.

Including: 

• Elohim - God (Council of Gods)
• El Shaddai - The Almighty
• And, my favorite Ehyeh - I Am

In Islam there are 99 names for the divine, called the 99 Beautiful Names of Allah.

The first one is Ar-Rahmaan the most merciful and the 99th is As-Saboor the patient one. 

In Hinduism there are 33 million names and forms of God or Brahman. (The universal principle or unchanging ultimate reality)

This month our Spiritual theme invites us to name the name the holy in our own lives, and to hear and appreciate what others call the holy, the ultimate, the divine. 

We are encouraged to feel the essential quality of community and the perceived power of places that some call God. 

Today I also hope to celebrate the bonds of friendship and understanding that can exist between our community and others.

Ours is a rare faith community;  we are home to humanists, naturalists, pantheists, theist, atheists, and agnostics. Whereas most communities of faith adhere to a more explicitly theistic frame of reference, which is quite alright. 

With this difference in mind, one could wonder can Unitarian Universalists and Evangelical Christians be friends, for instance?

Can Unitarian Universalists and African-American Baptists be friends?

I wonder can an agnostic UU be friends with a deeply trinitarian African Methodist Episcopalian?

This being Black History Month, lends some urgency to the exploration of these questions.

The answer to these questions is, yes, of course! 

Absolutely!

Mutual respect and appreciation of shared values, and commitment to work for the common good is what makes such friendships, and all cross-cultural friendships possible. 

Our theme Spirit, is also a special challenge to Unitarian Universalists. 

It is a challenge for us to get out of our heads; out of our comfort zone of the hyperrational. We will be pushed all the way into our feelings.

To feel something is a different thing to know facts and figures, it is beyond reasonable, beyond deduction.

Feelings call upon the  faculties of body and more often of soul; and, many of us, regard these faculties with deep suspicion.

We are suspicious of these “feelings” in ourselves and in others. We are cautious around the enthusiastic expressions, the zealotry, the near fanaticism of feelings, worried perhaps that new feelings might infect us, or awake something in us, and perhaps take us over! 

We still wonder if we can trust our feelings, our sense of intuition, our wonder. 

Can we trust the embodied knowing that is oftentimes at odds with our devotion to logic, and our somewhat elementary understanding of science.

This so-called logic that we are expected to apply to every aspect of our lives, does not always serve life. 

We even suppose that we can continue the very medieval conceit that we can apply logic, order and reason to our religious lives too as Unitarian Universalists. 

And, when we do this we find ourselves masquerading as “free thinkers” when our dogma is actually “unfeelingness.” 

I often get tripped up by the orthodoxy of logic, and the idea that there must be some structure and coherence, a theory of everything,  a rational, red thread, at the very least, running through it all.

And, if I could but find the red thread, it will allow me a sense of understanding, and perhaps, more importantly to me, a sense of control.


We are all possessed with this intense will to predict and control. It might be a western thing, but we see it many cultures. This will to control extends to every area of our lives, our health, family. We want to control the lives of our children, our neighbors and friends.

We even want to control our system of government. Our democractic system of governance often suggests that we can control our government, but that is not always true.

We want to control our economic systems, and even will the continuance of a high performing stock market through the magic of our “overthinking” about it. 

We allow ourselves to believe that if we gather enough information, if we take all of the correct actions, we can control the course and outcomes in every arena of our lives, and ultimately outwit the complex probabilities engine that is Life.

An example of this is way so many of us fritted over the recent election. 

We agonized trying to divine; would it be more years of what we knew, or would the necessary regime change come to Washington? 

What could we do to reduce the chance of the former, and increase the likelihood of the later? 

More reading, more talking, more writing, more protesting, more convincing, more what? But, always more?

So many of us could never be persuaded that we were doing enough, even if we worked ourselves into exhaustion.  But, the great mystery before us was what the next thing should be.

One of my colleagues related to me how they were filled with worry and anxiety about the outcome of the presidential election. This person like many UUs is white, educated, comfortably middle class and living in the farthest reaches of suburbia, in what one might call:

“... [a] fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war.” (John of Gaut speech, Richard II, William Shakespeare)

My friend, and colleague, a long time activist themself, was confessing their confusion about an African American pastor that they know, also a long-time fellow activist in an urban setting. 

That pastor, seemed to my friend, unbothered, insufficiently worried, about the election outcome, one way or another. 

Well, how could that be? 

How could that be? When clearly he (the pastor)  was a black man, and his community, so long disenfranchised. How could he be so oblivious when people he knew and loved have so much to lose or gain depending on the outcome of things. 

How could he be so well anchored, when all those around him, especially in more comfortable positions were so adrift with dread and apprehension?

My colleague said, that he was simply able to “leave it up to God.” Those were his remarkable words. 

The pastor was able to leave it up to God, and get on with his life. 

When I heard this I recognized something that excited me. This was a chance to offer a different and important perspective, one that would be crucial for us at UUSGU as we flesh out our Social Justice agenda under the banner of Racial Allyship and Racial Amity.

In order to strengthen our cross-cultural friendships, perhaps even extending the hand of friendship to a historically black congregation, becoming sister churches. 

We’ve dreamed of doing such things together, but we’ve have yet to turn the dreams into reality.

If we hope to do this well, we must appreciate the unique frame of reference expressed by the black pastor and activist. 

I think what my UU friend and colleague struggled to understand, what some in our congregation might struggle to understand is that feeling of presence, a companioning presence that attends all religious experience.

That presence, some choose to call God. 

Without knowing the pastor personally, I know that he is naming the creative, and ultimately liberating encounter with the divine, in the black idiom. And, in so doing he is allowing room for all sorts of unimagined possibilities and aid to emerge and become real. 

When we let go of that illusionary sense of control, we can take on a much grander point of reference, where so much more is possible. This is not to say that we don’t have to show up, and be an active participant in our liberation, but rather the work of getting free is not ours to do alone.

In our reading we heard the words of Howard Thurman the 20th century Quaker Theologian, and mystic. 

He was the first Black dean and chaplain of a historically white institution, Boston University. He was also the founder of one of the first intentionally interfaith and interracial churches in San Francisco in 1944. 

This church, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples which still meets, has as its vision:

“...is an interfaith, interracial, intercultural community of seekers dedicated to personal empowerment and social transformation through an ever deepening relationship with the Spirit of God in All Life.”

This is pretty extraordinary.

This man wrote:

...The central fact in religious experience is the awareness of meeting God. The encounter; sometimes, a confrontation; and sometimes, a sense of Presence. What is insisted upon, however, without regard to the term used, is that in the experience defined as religious, the individual is seen as being exposed to direct knowledge of ultimate meaning, ne plus ultra being, in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation.

In the Howard Thurman reading, what is really compelling about it is the way that Thurman captures the essence of feeling, coming from the encounter with God, which is imagined in the most electrifying terms.

It is a confrontation with presence!

It is being exposed to direct knowledge, ultimate meaning, that is in his words, immediate, distinct, revelatory.

Ne Plus Ultra, the ancient Latin phrase that refers to the quality of unsurpassed perfection. (There is nothing more!)

This experience can be described in words, but one needs so many of them, and in the end it includes concepts that are beyond, words, phrases, thought and logic, but are deeply felt all the same.

Thurman writes:

...The mind apprends the whole --the experience is beyond or inclusive of the discursive. It is not other than the discursive, but somehow it is inclusive of the discursive.

I really appreciate the word discursive because it describes a style of writing that is fluid and expansive. 

Often it is used in the pejorative sense. It can also reveal a bit of contempt for the kinds of speech marked with digressions from subject to subject, with little sense of coherence or direction. 

But, that’s just it, all of the words that we might use to describe the holy will fall short, it will land on the ear like a housefly trying to get our attention, petitioning for his release from captivity. 

When the people in our lives, say “I am letting go and letting God.”

When they say “God Willing.”

When we hear “It is in God’s hands now.”

When we ourselves say “Only God knows how…”

This is not an abnegation, nor is it a rejection of real responsibility, or to deny a sense of personal agency. At least it doesn’t have to be. 

It is not defeatism, resignation or simply giving up!

It is a courageous acknowledgement of the vast mystery and dizzying complexity of every aspect of life.

These turns of phrase, are a recognition of our limited humanity and these phrases lend that humanity the dignity and rest (sabbath) that we deserve.

These feelings come from life sustaining belief systems, systems that sustain life.

These, at times puzzling turns of phrase allow us to be present in the moment and to face life's many uncertainties with dignity and grace.

For the pastor/activist to say that the election and all else is in God’s hands, is an instance of life sustaining faith and feeling. 

That energy, that power, that calm does not come from ambition, wealth or fame. It does not come from accounting for all of the outcomes, mitigating risks or trying to control them altogether. 

Rather, it comes from the ongoing creative and liberating encounter with God. 


But, where is God in Unitarian Universalism?

Where is God in the 7 principles?

There is indeed no mention of God or any deity in the seven principles.

And, therein lies the beauty of our living tradition and, the extraordinary elegance of the principles, in that they do not pretend to describe what is inclusive of the discursive, but is ultimately beyond discursive, 

7 words, 
99 words, 3
3 million words 

These words would not be enough to describe the holy, and it is always silly when we try to circumscribe the essence of feeling. 

But what our 7 principles together, do it to point us down the road where in the moment we will counter the holy. 

The principles are a way of placing ourselves in the pathway of ...direct knowledge of ultimate meaning, ne plus ultra being, in which all that the individual is, becomes clear as immediate and often distinct revelation. 

The principles are the means through which we encounter a God of our own understanding. 

Our 3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations, would be the one principle we might focus our attention on as a means of connecting with others whether here in our meetinghouse or elsewhere.

Remember that our community is a place where we grow spiritually, and expand our knowledge and also our feelings.

We seek to embrace all on this soul growing journey we call Life; knowing that we will and should have different names for the divine.

I want us to hear the turn of phrase, “I let go and Let God”, “It’s in God’s hands now”  not with pity, contempt or ridicule, or even empathy, but rather, as one of the many markers of courageous spiritual growth.

I want us to hear these words as a commitment to ongoing liberation through a generative encounter with God.

Our spiritual growth lies in the true appreciation of difference, including different points of view, and celebrating the diversity of ways that we name and the many ways that we feel the presence of God.

...God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land. - From “Life Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyZkRgQ4ZnQ​

 
“I am building a cathedral”
 
It takes hard work to construct a building that can last a life time. Building a structure to last for forever takes something more.
 
To build something like this (Point to Church)
 
Involves the marshaling of resources, so many tons of concrete, wood, glass and steel. This is combined with thousands of hours of physically and emotionally intensive labor, along with the commitment of astronomical  financial resources.
 
In the grand scheme of things nothing is more improbable to occur then a cathedral. But that is exactly what all three workers in our reading where building.
 
Cathedrals do not simply appear out of nowhere. As with any massive architectural project they are built in standard phases, and only the ultimate phase, the last phase, involves shovels, mortar, brick and steel-frame.
 
In architectural speak, the first few phases are:
 
Predesign
Schematic design (and)
Design Development phases
 
But, I combine the three and them the “Dream Phase”.
 
The Dream Phase is the vision of things, not as they are, but as they could be.
 
This is looking reality as it is.
 
Looking at the site,
 
is it a downtown location in the heart of the city?
 
 is it rural?
 
is the site perched on a dramatic seaside cliff?
 
This vision sees the needs of the potential occupants, the end-users.
 
The needs of Physicians and Patients are different from the needs of hotel managers and patrons in obvious ways. 
Although, hospitals and hotels both serve transient populations, people moving on holiday, or people moving beyond life as we know it.
 
The Dream phase also sees beyond present day needs, it sees the needs of the future. It anticipates some of the ways that the end-users might change and how the space could respond to the inevitable changes that occur.
 
 This phase sees old patterns of development, environmental and demographic changes. Sometimes it even anticipates the ways that political changes will impact the site, the structure and its occupants.
Perhaps a new regime prefers green drapes instead of blue.
 
This kind of visioning usually means looking at how a population might grow?
 
“Will the structure be able to expand to accommodate the change?”
 
Maybe they will be able to add pavilions on the sides, or grow taller with additional storeys?
 
I am sure that this is the kind of conversation has occurred right here in this congregation at some point. Or perhaps you’ve had this  thought on more than one occasion?
 
Can we carve out an extra bedroom by dividing the living room, when the baby comes,?
When mom can no longer live on her own?,
When Jim is out of work and needs someplace to stay?
 
This dream phase isn’t just about the fun stuff. It’s also about more mundane, some would say, the more grizzly aspects of building.
It is about building code compliance, issues with deeds and restrictive covenants.
 
It is about things like: “only homes of a minimum of 10,000 sqft can be built on this site” –no Nehemiah houses here!
 
It’s about budget controls and consulting with engineers of various disciplines, these are the people whose proud duty it is to say
 
 “no, you can’t do that!”
 
 The abrupt ending of every architect’s flight of fancy.
 
Yes, there are limits even in the dream phase, and beyond.
 It can be years before the ceremonial gold shovel in shoved into the earth and the photographs of the visiting dignitaries are taken.
 
Seeing all of the work involved in designing a structure, it becomes clearer to see why they take so long to build.
 
When will ground zero, be something more than a gigantic crater downtown?
Hopefully, the 9-11 Memorial will be completed by the tenth anniversary of the tragic event in 2011?
Hopefully.
 
But, know that the 9-11 Memorial has been built and torn down a hundred times over in the minds of the architects, construction managers and engineers before even one steel beam was placed in the ground.
 
“It has to be just so”
 
Structures are not designed just for a lifetime they are designed to stand the test of time. The dream phase involves planning structures of lasting strength and endurance.
 
Structures that can weather the tests of climate change.
 
And, I am not just talking about weather extremes. Lasting structures don’t just need to withstand tornadoes over Brooklyn (Queens) and flooding in SoHo.
 
They need to withstand that force of changes in the political climate, changes in the economic climate and all the changes that can occur in a cultural ecosystem.
 
It needs to be a structure with integrity that can be counted on.  Values that can be trusted.
 
The dream phase in our architecture of the spirit, also holds the promise of the unknown that is the promise of “destiny”.
 
Here, in this place one not only holds on to the reality of things as they are, and things as they would be, or could be.
It also holds fast to a measure of uncertainty, Our creations are strong enough to support the known unknowns and unknown-unknowns.
 
We design niches to hold the humble spirit of inquiry, she that speaks, in a still small voice and says:
 
“leave room for doubt” (whisper)
 
This whisper echoes through the ages, but we must create moments in time and spaces where we can--- very attentively, very purposefully, and very lovingly hear it.
 
Our structures must stand the test of time. It must have structural integrity, that is, the ability--
 to resist at times,
to bend at times,
to adapt at times,
but always remain true to the dream at all times.
 
The ancient French traveller’s name is not given nor is his destination indicated, but clearly he was on some kind of mission, he was a seeker of some sort, taking delight in his own curiosity. He asked the group of stonecutters:
 
Mon amis, Bon jours, Qu'est-ce que c'est?
(sa la—point to something)
 
Quel est votre rêve ici.?        
 
“what are building?” , what do you aspire towards?  My friends.
 
He went on by asking each of the stonecutters, are you making something that will just last your life time,
perhaps your children’s life time,
or are you making something for all time?
 
Not being satisfied with the answers he received thus far, he finally made his way over to the third stonecutter.
 
And, said: “A vous?”
 
“And you,” what do you say?
 
 The last mason raised their dusty, hat covered, head revealing shining eyes, and the mason pointed towards the heavens, and she said “I am building a cathedral”.
 
She was clearly no ordinary mason, and she could see beyond the reality of the back braking work, and the heat and the sweat of her enterprise.
 
Some people called her a dreamer, she was really a visionary.
 
The traveller responded by saying: “so you are making something of lasting value?”
 
She said “I am creating a sacred space.”
 
It will be a place that will always welcome all that come through its doors.
It will be a safe space, both for those within its walls and those outside. It will be able to hold all seekers.
 
It will be the place where the Muslim mystic, with his band of wonderers, worshippers and lovers of leaving could join in harmonious singing with the  scholarly rabbi who explained the entire Torah to a listener on one foot.
 
The congregation will sing songs of righteousness. They will live in a loving spirit, caring and nurturing each other and world. Here they will weave tapestries whose beauty will confound all attempts to define, and categorize them.
 
And, a river will flow it, and there will be a special tree in the center, and…
 
The stonecutter could hardly get the words out fast enough. No one had ever asked her what she was making. She went on:
 
They will wear splendid robes
 
And, they will laugh out loud.
 
And they will dance. The congregation will dance to the hymns, whose words are taken from the Baghavad Gita and the Christian New Testament, all while the shaman keeps perfect timing with the beat of the drum.
 
I am building a place that is needed in the world. I am creating a place for hope, a cathedral.
 
Meanwhile, the follow masons didn’t know what to make of what they hearing. One of them wondered out loud,
 
“I knew we should have never let this wacky woman into our stonecutter’s guild in the first place, she is clearly hysterical.”
 
But, the traveller stood there in amazement, he was stopped in his tracks, awe struck by the very idea of such a cathedral, and the promise it would hold.
 
Could you imagine the traveller standing there?
 
It must have been like hearing that all of your favorite holidays had arrived early and all on the same day—today.
 
“Hello friends, Today is “Thanks-Rama-Hanu-Chrisma-Kwanza-Ca” now prepare to receive your many gifts.”
 
It all must have seemed to be so fantastic, so improbable, yet so necessary.
 
You can see that the mason was making a structure that would need to be strong. It would have to be strengthen from within and without.
 
The stones she would cut would have to be just the right thickness, just the right shape to create strong walls that would support  large bays for expansive windows with clear and colored glass.
 
The stones would have be the right integrity to create the colonnades, the archways and the vaults.
 
She was hard at work for days on end, cutting the stones that would become the buttresses.
 
Buttresses are common in the old European cities.
 
You’ve seen the ones I am talking about, the graceful, sometimes fanciful structures made up of pillars and half arches. They are attached to the sides of buildings, usually old-gothic style churches, but not always. Sometimes you see them on old office buildings and at universities.
 
Trinity Church at Wall Street,  and the Iconic Woolworth Building just a few block up on Broadway are good examples of gothic style architecture and in particular buttresses. One of my favorite examples in City College in Harlem.
 
Buttresses usually support a building from the outside, externally supporting the structure from gravity and the weight of the walls and roof.
 
You don’t have to go all the way downtown to see them. We can see them right here in this room. Here our Buttresses are on the inside of our structure. Here the communal supports are internal.
 
Buttresses are fascinating. They are even more fascinating if you happen to be an architecture enthusiast like myself. There is a very subtle yet profound lesson in the construction of a buttress.
 
For instance before you build a buttress you have to start with a wooden frame to brace the stones. That frame is called a “centering”.
 
The stones are laid on the centering and mortar is applied where the stones meet. The mortar and stones conform to the shape of the centering.
And once everything is dry and in proper place, the centering can be removed, leaving what will appear as an elegant void and the buttress will stand on its own.
 
But it starts with the centering
 
(Pause)
 
In the end the Buttress is an architectural element that can support its own weight and the weight of others. It uses its strength to accommodate and sustain life. It allows for wide open spaces to be enclosed without too many obstructions.
 
What are the elements that give us support without unnecessary obstructions?
 
What are the buttresses in our lives as individuals and as communities?
 
Many years ago, in fact 12,000 years ago. Long before there was such a thing a “buttress”, a “France” or even a “Middle Ages” there was a site that is today called “Gobekli Tepe” in Southeastern Turkey, it is otherwise known as the “Turkish Stonehenge”.
 
(laugh)
 
“Turkish Stonehenge
 
I have to laugh at the not so subtle bit of European cultural imperialism that is revealed in the name “Turkish Stonehenge”.
 
 Most of us will be familiar with English Stonehenge, with its icon grey stone monoliths.
 
Turkish Stonehenge, however, predates, “Stonehenge Stonehenge” by 7,000 years.
So maybe the English monoliths should be called the “British Gobekli Tepe” in honor of its more sophisticated predecessor.
 
(but, that really is beside the point)
 
The site of Gobekli Tepe is comprised of a dozen or so circles some as large as 100 feet in diameter and surrounded by rectangular pillars, each made of a chunk of solid limestone. These megaliths range from 10 to 50 tons, a piece.
 
Archeologists say that at least 500 people would have been required to quarry, transport and erect the pillars, each one of them, uphill! Using the best technology of the time, which wasn’t much.
 
The French traveller would be in heaven, he could talk to hundreds maybe thousands of stonecutters and everyone else involved in erecting the pillars every day, for years and never have the same conversation twice.
 
Why would so many people come together for such a purpose?
 
The level of complexity, and coordination, not forgetting the intensive and continuous labor involved is staggering.
 
It hurts my back just to think about it.
 
The hilltop sanctuary was a sacred place. And, archeologists there are describing it as the world’s first temple. They say it was the spiritual center of a nomadic people.
 
Each of the sandy colored, t-shaped pillars has carved on it, reliefs depicting an assortment of wild animals,
 
(all the animals were wild at this point in history)
 
There are elaborate representations of snakes, scorpions, foxes, cranes, ducks, bulls, boars, lions, (oh my). There are even cravings of people.
 
To look at the images of the pillars is to look back on a very different period in time, or maybe not?
 
Perhaps the carvings were understood to be a protection against the animals they depicted. Maybe they represented the hope for special powers over the natural world. The lions could represent anything from
power,
 invincibility,
imperialism or simply a lion.
 
I think the fact that humans are depicted alongside the array of creatures, suggests that these Neolithic people saw themselves as interconnected with all life, as an integral part of the natural order, without any dominion or special authority, just another form of life.
And, maybe they celebrated this understanding by erecting a hilltop temple.
 
But in the end all of this is just speculation. Some archeologist say that the site could just as easily been a trading center for the nomads.
Nevertheless, in the past, what you believed and how you lived your life were interwoven, you couldn’t separate one from the other.
Gobekli Tepe could be a case of both/and, both worship and trade center.
 
The pillars might have even been used to support a wooden roof as a shelter from the elements.
It doesn’t matter what we call them, pillars, buttresses, walls for sacred places.
We just keep building them, we can’t seem to help it.
 
It’s what we do
 
The Unitarian poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned the words for the hymn “All are Architects” which captures the spirit of our never ending desire to build. The hymn goes:
           
“All are architects of fate, working in these walls of time; some with massive deeds and great, some with ornaments of rhyme.”
 
The hymn ends with the charge:
 
“Build today, then, strong, and sure, with firm and ample base; and ascending and secure, shall tomorrow find its place.”
 
“Ascending and secure”
We rise from the furthest, deepest parts of the past, yet, ours is a tradition, that seeks its place in the future. The hymn ends “tomorrow find its place” we hope to get there by searching, by seeking the best and the highest values in this life.
 
Each us are architects, builders and archeologist. We excavate the useful relics and cast aside what is not of lasting value.
 
Ours is a tradition of loving, thoughtful, spiritual, holy inquiry.
A tradition strengthen from within by a faith is the big enough, strong enough to hold both hope and doubt.
This is something to be grateful for, to rejoice in and be glad in it.
 
“All are all Architects of fate” indeed Mr. Longfellow.
 
And, Thank you Mr. Longfellow. Thank you Mr. Traveller, Thank you Ms. Stonecutter. Thank you Isaiah,
Servetus,
Channing,
Emerson.
Thank you Ethelred Brown and Marjorie Bowens Wheatley and Forrest Church and all those who built temples in the heart.
 
Thank you for building something with integrity. A cathedral house big enough for all to come inside.
 
I will end here with the words of Patrick Murfin who best captures our “reality phase” way of being, he says:
 
“Yes, here we build temples in our hearts.
Side by side we come,
Scavenging the ages for wisdom,
Cobbling together as best we may
The stones of a thousand  altars, leveling with doubt,
Framing with skepticism,
Measuring by logic,
Sinking firm foundations in the earth
As we reach for the heavens.
 
Amen, and may it be so!