I like a variety of religious cereals mixed together.
This is the type of guy I am: I will mix three different types of breakfast cereal to get the perfect blend of crunchy and sweet. (Yeah, I know, I’m a real rebel) This is also the type of church I want to attend: a balanced blend of tradition, intelligence and reality. As you may have guessed, I am still looking for a church that fits my breakfast palate.
Christmas was nice
The Experience in downtown Sacramento has a blend that we first tasted earlier this year on Christmas Eve. Their services are held in Sacramento’s first Episcopal Church, St Paul’s. My family figured it would be a nice venue to anonymously get our necessary dose of Christmas hymns and spirit without the after taste of fundamentalism. With the exception of not having Eucharist, the Experience Christmas Eve service was pleasant, uplifting, and a nice little traditional Christian celebration.
The Real Experience
Dr. David Thompson, Pastor of the Experience chats before the service.
Of course, it is hard to go wrong in the historical granite sanctuary of St. Paul’s with a beautiful pipe organ, talented musicians and the Christmas trimmings. But I knew this wasn’t the progressive interfaith Experience church service that I had heard about.
Can you weave different religions together?
Word around town was that the Experience, led by Pastor Dr. David Thompson, was a unique religious service created on a Christian loom and weaving other enlightened religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam into the fabric. So did I just describe a new church or a re-purposing of a Universal Unitarian Church format? For me, titles and denominations have little value. It’s all about the people, from top to bottom.
Memorial Leland Stanford Jr. stained glass.
A challenge to think, that’s new
While attendance at this past Sunday’s 4:04 pm Experience service was not as full as Christmas, it seemed no less diverse. We “experienced” more of the full textural content and liturgy on this Sunday in Lent. However, the homily was anything but a deprivation of spiritual food one might find during the Lenten season. After a guided meditation through a forest and cave, reading from Hindu and Muslim texts, Dr. Thompson launched into discussion of the Higgs boson or God particle worthy of a NOVA program on astrophysics.
Mission accomplished, without a flight suit
As the Pastor talked about Higgs boson giving mass to all elements of the universe,
The red door is always open.
vibrating star clusters generating vast quantities of carbon necessary for life and the statistical improbabilities of any of it happening without the possibility of an invisible hand, I wondered how much was being absorbed by the posteriors in the pews. In the normal course of leading a church, all preachers harbor the twinkling of hope that their Sunday sermons we be the spark for deeper contemplation by the parishioners. Mission accomplished for Dr. David.
Science and religion, meant for one another
I couldn’t help musing over the struggle between science and religion. The genesis myths handed down by all religions to explain how we happened to be on this on this planet have always been at odds with observable earthly and celestial events. But even the expanding knowledge of our scientific world is tempered by questions about moral and ethical dilemmas addressed by religious philosophy. Science and religion intrinsically seem to need one another to create harmony and balance in the world.
Sanctuary of St. Paul’s, that echo with the words of many religions during an Experience interfaith service.
Just as scientists have arrived at the same conclusion regarding astrophysical or biological phenomena from different pathways, perhaps the world’s religions have reached similar human truths by traveling disparate routes as well.
Conspiracy or coincidence
Either way, I couldn’t help feeling that the whole Experience service might have been a set up. My son had just finished honors chemistry and was now taking honors physics in high school. Whose idea was it to couch an entire sermon around scientific theories that my son found so interesting? On top of that, we were sitting in a historic church that Governor Leland Stanford had attended and for whose son was dedicated a stained glass window in remembrance to his early death at 15 – the same age as my son.
Strength in diversity
So maybe it was divine intervention that led us to the Experience this past Sunday.
Pipe of St. Paul’s organ behind Dr. David Thompson
Especially divine were the piano and organ accompaniment of Jim Jordan, singing by Heather Clark and the talented choir we heard on Christmas Eve. A diverse congregation always brings with it a diverse and talented group of parishioners that the Experience seems to be nurturing.
Better than a breakfast buffet
The Experience is meant to be interfaith and “One World” in their acceptance of all people and faith explorations. I have a feeling they will never grow into a mega-church, but I think they would like to evolve into a sustainable organization. If you like sampling different worship and faith services then the Experience should certainly be on your radar. I like the blend of spirituality and we’ll definitely drop by for another helping of spiritual enlightenment and diversity in the near future.