Dennis Peters 

August 29, 2021

Copyright 2021, Dennis Peters. All rights reserved. 

“Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back. It  must be held out empty – for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.” 

Dag Hammarskjold 

I’ve always thought of a chalice as a cup to contain a liquid—like a communion cup  used by Catholics. (Lutherans use a tray with these little shot glasses in it, containing  wine. Other denominations do the same thing, but with grape juice.) If the congregants  had been doing this back in the 1400’s, we could have been burned at the stake  alongside Jan Hus, the predecessor to the reformation, by the Catholic Church. Their  tradition had, and still has, only the priest drinking the wine. And in a large church, by  the end of the service, a priest could be found (even fairly recently) staggering and  slurring his words from the amount of wine drunk. One sip for each communion  recipient… By the way, the story of Jan Hus is a bit more complicated than communion  wine for the masses, but we’ll leave it there for now. 

In Christianity, the chalice is also called the Holy Grail. It was supposedly the cup Jesus  passed around at the Last Supper. And that Indiana Jones was in search of in The Last  Crusade. The name “grail” is just a derivation from old French or Latin, meaning, “a  dish.” Even Monty Python used the Grail as a lit-up sign on top of the Castle Anthrax. We won’t go there. 

Another use of the term “chalice” is, a cup with oil in it, as a kind of oil lamp. This is  apparently something the Greeks used, and of course the Romans did also, copying the  Greeks, as usual. That’s the sense in which we use it—though in our case the flame is  from a candle. 

In World War II, Unitarians were very active in underground movements, hiding  people from the Nazis, and rescuing them. These included Jews, the Roma (used to be  called by the epithet “Gypsies”), those with disabilities, and also Unitarians! The rescue  efforts were extremely dangerous. If caught, the rescuers could be killed on sight, or  sent to death camps themselves. The chalice symbol began to be used as a secret symbol  identifying the underground to each other. 

I will often wear a chalice lapel pin on my shirt collar—poking through threads,  creating permanent holes! It’s a reminder to myself. Others here will wear that, or a  pendant on a necklace. Why is this? Is it the same motivation as a Christian has for  wearing a cross? I don’t know. I suspect it’s quite a bit different. Here’s my reason. 

The chalice is to me a reminder of who I am. I chose Unitarian Universalism as an adult.  I chose it for a number of reasons: for the camaraderie, the community, even the shared  projects, as we try to make the world a better place. But for me the most important reason is an inner, a secret place. It’s a place where motivations begin. I am a mystic, but  in a way that doesn’t allow for explanations, or even for language. 

Often I misstep, take wrong turns, speak inappropriately. Make life choices that turn  out to be horrendous. Or, in kinder, more gentle terms: learning events. I also am subject  to the first of the Buddhist “Four Noble Truths”: Existence is permeated by suffering and  unhappiness. Illness, accidents, natural disasters. In the midst of all of that, it is easy to  lose my way, to forget where I was going, lose track of the end goal, forget who I am.  

The image of the chalice helps me with that. What I see in my mind: a dark room. I’m  standing near the back. Up on the front, on a raised surface, a small candle flame burns.  I can smell the candle wax. As I watch it, I realize that I am in my own secret place, and  somehow that chalice is me, the center of my being. It is who I am. And rather than  chase the results of my mistakes, making them go from bad to worse, I can come back  here, inside, and come back down to who I am. Yes, I will need to deal with the  aftermath of those mistakes, knowing I messed up. But I will do it from a calm, centered  position. The me who I am, whom I present to the world on a daily basis, turns out not  to be… me. This chalice represents the deeper level, below the conscious level. It is who  I am when all the language, the stories, the relationships, the desires, fall away.  

Does that seem too abstract? In a world of distractions, and of… stuff that makes no  sense, and often doesn’t even seem real, it brings me back to a centering that may  sometimes be the only affirming reality. 

We are born into this world without having taken any conscious action. In fact  consciousness at this point is something that only gradually takes hold. So from this  standpoint we have yet to make mistakes. Another word for “mistake,” at least in the  Christian world, is “sin.” And so there is no “original” sin, because we aren’t capable of  it at the beginning of our lives.  

As we begin to develop, we learn by trial and error. Those errors are simply mistakes.  An “oops.” They happen when we try to walk, and trip, and smack our heads on  something. They happen when we want something that would be harmful to us, and  are prevented from having it. We may cry, or have a temper tantrum. The whole  interaction could be called learning from a mistake, or it could just be called learning.  And in this case that learning shapes who we are. 

And yet who we are has been there, somehow, inside. This outward personality  development seems (to me) to be a kind of overlay. Our conscious self is just a thin shell  over a far deeper, richer self. Below this veneer we are still in there, the chalice, the  flame of our existence burning brightly. And another secret about our “chalice”: when  allowed to, when our outer persona quiets sufficiently, that flame leaks through, begins to permeate this outward personality. Through this outward quieting, ironically we  begin to become more of whom we really are. 

And who is that, exactly? It is of course different for each of us. And it is almost never  fully realized, fully seen in this outer world. When I meet someone like this, I either  don’t recognize that that’s what I’m seeing, or I’m awestruck, incapable of talking  coherently with them! But I think the Buddhists describe this kind of person as one who  is awakened. Their term, from Sanskrit, is bodhisattva. This is a person who, rather than  take the reward of ending the karmic cycle of rebirth, or attain nirvana, instead stays to  help other suffering beings. It’s a person who is determined to adhere to the Four Noble  Truths, and to follow the Eightfold Path. (Both of these are Buddhist precepts.) 

I’m not a practicing Buddhist. And I’m a looong distance from being a bodhisattva. Yet  there is something very appealing to this approach. At least it points the way toward  one path to meaning and purpose.  

That inner chalice… is where any sense, any understanding, resides in me. It does not make sense for me to try to explain it, since this me who is standing here, talking with  you, is a subset of that total, inner self, and as such, I am ignorant of the total picture. So  I really cannot tell you where it leads me. Or why, for that matter.  

This may sound like I’m talking about another form of meditation. Maybe I am, a little  bit. Sort of. But I guess it’s not very close to most versions of meditation with which I  am familiar. There’s what’s translated as “mindfulness,” maintaining awareness on a  specific something, like your breath. Or mantra meditation, in which you repeat a  specific syllable or two, allowing it to float down through your being. (Transcendental  meditation is this kind.) There is a Christian meditation, called “Centering Prayer.” And  also a Quaker practice involving quiet time together, with contemplation of that  “Inward Light.” And the Desert Fathers and Mothers (starting in about the second  century C.E.) practiced something called Hesychasm, which involved sitting quietly,  eyes closed, all concentration on God. If you search the internet for “meditation” you’ll  find helpful questions like: What are the three types of meditation? What are the seven  types of meditation? What are the nine types of meditation? You get the picture. 

My little visualization here just reminds me… of myself. Consider it to be a metaphor.  A way briefly to conceptualize that which cannot be conceptualized. I know; this is  making no sense whatsoever. 

One of the big advantages to this little act, however, is that it reminds me that there is  more to me than what stares at me in the mirror, in the morning, when I’m brushing my  teeth. It opens a channel between this outer me and that inner, foundational me. It  offers the possibility for growth, and for integration. And if I make the mistake of thinking about how wonderful I am, quiet visualization of that inner chalice, in that  dark inner room, will help to quickly dispel those thoughts. 

As we contemplate the Unitarian Universalist chalice, we can ask this additional  question: what is the use for a secret inner chalice of our own? Did anyone besides me  have this thought in mind when the chalice was chosen for our symbol? Originally our  symbol was just on paper, two-dimensional. At some point, fellowships—probably  independently—began to turn it into a three-dimensional fact, something to be lit every  Sunday. And now the chalice has spread, within our churches, within ourselves. Its  light is a symbol of who we are in this world. And it is a symbol of who we are, each of  us, inside. It is a representation of goodness. With the inherent mixed metaphors  between the altar flame and the grail for drinking, it represents ingesting the fire of  truth and love. This fire is now a part of us, consuming our inner being. It is the basis of  our community. It joins us together in our common purpose. 

For we are not just our set of Principles, feel-good statements, aspirations that we  contemplate once a week. We are the actions propelled by those Principles. World  changing acts that are based in love, and delivered in fire. Knowing what is right is not  enough. Acting on that knowledge is required. “Justice, equity and compassion” are  great words, but they are just words without the fire to implement them in our  communities. “Respect for the Interdependent Web” is a fine thing. Without the flame  of our intent we will watch the natural world perish, go extinct, wither and die. 

We arrive finally at who we must be, who the world needs, what we must do. With the  symbol of our “inner chalice,” and joined to others in this fellowship, we are ready for  our work. We are able to take on this task, or as Don Quixote says in his “Impossible  Dream,” this “heavenly cause.” We arrive at the point where, as Frederick Buechner [Beekner] states: our deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger. 

“There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from  the pages of a book, the sound of somebody’s voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills  your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the  dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?” 

Frederick Buechner: Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale