by E. Alan Meece
June 7, 2025
Band of Writers, Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Los Gatos
My Band of Writers Essays
for the meeting of June 8

The word "prompt" was a Jeopardy answer yesterday. The category was short words u know, or short words with a u in them. The correct question for prompt was "cue". That was a good question. I looked inside my mind for it. But I missed it.

The letter u was inside the word cue. The word hue is another such great word. So is the word you. British spell color with a u in it. And they and other Europeans know about you and I, and about colour and art and architecture too. And so do Asians.

I looked inside myself today, and as I write. I see my soul with my inner eye, and so can you. There is a u in both of these words. They are u. My soul is one being that contains and underlies all my perceptions. It is said that the body is the temple of the soul (based on 1 Corinthians 6:19). I can look inside and see the colours of my soul. This temple is like a cathedral, like the ones in Europe and the temples in Asia. In the Bible Jesus asks, if your son asks you for bread, would you give him a stone? (based on Matthew 7:9-11). Alan Watts said that for the Christian Church that Jesus founded, the answer is yes (see https://www.organism.earth/library/document/future-of-religion scroll down to "1:01:04" under Sacred Subversion in the text or move scroll bar in the video to 1:01:46).

Now, it is also true that sometimes this Christian Church provides food to the needy, and indeed the body and blood of Christ to the congregants. But what they built with the stones also feeds the soul. When I gaze at a cathedral, and when I look inside, it thrills my soul and inspires me. The great artists who built and decorated it inspired the people who looked inside it, and they looked up high and felt heaven on Earth inside it and in themselves. Later, the organ sounds built and composed inside these churches sent us there, too.

I looked inside, and I can see the same heaven inside the temple of my soul. This temple was built over a much longer time than any temple of stone, through eons of evolution and creation, inspired by the Spirit of Heaven, within you, within all.

Original Americans know you and I well too, and are satisfied with revering the Earth as their outer temple and with mounds and pyramids they built, which like all temples in all times and places, are stairways to heaven within and without us; ways to climb high inside and out and touch the sky so wide.