The Spirituality of E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One

A talk given on May 4, 2025, for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola

Click here to watch a recording of this talk

In 1776, the Continental Congress called a committee to design what would become the Great Seal of the United States. The committee included prominent figures like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson… but it also included a Swiss-born artist named Pierre Eugene du Simitiere. Tasked with finding a motto for the seal, Du Simitiere looked at his options and ultimately drew inspiration from a phrase he saw on the cover of a London publication known as The Gentlemen’s Magazine. It was a phrase with thirteen letters—perfect to represent the number of colonies which came together to form the US—and it was a phrase which, long before The Gentlemen’s Magazine, showed up in the writings of Heraclitus. He wrote, “The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.” It showed up in Cicero’s paraphrase of Pythagoras when he wrote, “When each person loves the other as much as themselves, it makes one out of many.” The phrase, of course, was E pluribus unum. “Out of many, one,” and in 1776, the committee adopted it to fly on the banner atop the new United States Seal. It would go on to serve as the unofficial US motto until the mid-fifties, when it would be bumped by “In God We Trust” in an attempt to fight the Soviets.

E pluribus unum is one of those catchphrases we hear so often that it can sometimes become meaningless—a collection of sounds as familiar as “Just Do It” or “I’m Lovin’ It.” But, at its heart, it encapsulates a wisdom that reminds us just what the United States is. In the same way those thirteen colonies joined together to become something more than the sum of its parts, we continue, today, to come together on an individual, group, and state level to become something greater—something with a spirit and personality all its own. It tells us what systems theorists have been saying since the early 20^th century—that there is no one entity that exists outside of the context of a web of relationships. And whether we’re talking about a human, which consists of individual organs and cells in relationship, or a family, which consists of individual humans in relationship—even a galaxy, which consists of individual planets in relationship—on every single level from the microcosmic to the cosmic, everything we can point to as “one” is actually, “many.” Conversely, everything that looks like “many” is, in a way, “one.” I find that beautiful and humbling.

But there are two things we need to know about systems—these complex webs of relationships. One: They aren’t always healthy. They may be the unavoidable pattern of the universe, sure, but they also fall apart. Under the right circumstances, a system will collapse like a body with a disease. Whether it’s an ecosystem or a congregation, an unhealthy system cannot survive. The second thing we need to know is that this pattern of collapse is predictable, and, in fact, there is one particular factor that—when we know how to look for it—can predict whether a system will produce well-being or suffering for its individual parts. This one factor is the key to understanding the relationship between the pluribus and the unum—on whatever level they manifest from the micro to the macro. This factor is what psychologist Dr. Dan Siegel calls “integration.”

Integration is the difference between a system that thrives and a system that drains itself of life. So, this morning, in honor of the 2025 Law Week and its theme of E pluribus unum, I’d like to take a look at just how this idea actually works. Through the lens of Dr. Siegel’s “integration,” I’d like to explore some language around this dance between the “many” and the “one.” In so doing, I hope we can gain more awareness of where some of our greatest struggles may be, give us the agency to do something about it, and appreciate that we can be so much more together than we ever could on our own. So, let’s dive in.

The first thing we need to know about integration is that, at its core, it’s about the intentional dance between two factors: linkage and differentiation. In other words, it’s about the balance between honoring sameness and honoring difference.

In his 2010 book Mindsight, Dr. Siegel talks about it like this:

These days, before I define mental well-being in my lectures, I often ask for volunteers to sing in a “complexity choir.” Experienced singers usually break the ice and come bounding up to the front of the room, while others, initially more reticent, slowly find their way to join in. […]

My first request is that the newly assembled choir members all sing the same note at the same time, simply humming along in unison. Someone comes up with a mid-range pitch and they quickly settle into a uniform sound. After about half a minute, I hold up my hand to stop them and then make another request. This time I ask them to cover their ears so they can’t hear one another, and then, at my signal, launch individually into whatever song with whatever words they’d like to sing. The audience usually laughs when the singers begin, but they quickly get restive, so I hold up my hand again.

Finally I ask the singers to choose a song most of them are likely to know and then to sing it together, harmonizing feely as the spirit moves them. This may be the ultimate pickup ensemble, but it’s remarkable to hear what happens as a group of teachers or psychotherapists sail into “Oh! Susanna” or “Amazing Grace” or “Row-Row-Row Your Boat.” […] Once the melody is established, individual voices begin to emerge, weaving their harmonies above and below, playing off one another, moving intuitively toward a crescendo before the final notes. Faces light up in the choir and audience alike; we are all swept to the flow of the singers’ energy and aliveness. At these times, people have said […] there is a palpable sense of vitality that fills the room.

At that moment we are experiencing integration at its acoustic best.

Integration, again, is about the dance between linkage and differentiation. In Dr. Siegel’s example, each member of the choir retains their own unique voice—they’re singing their own unique notes—yet they are doing so while listening and mindfully responding to the unique voices of those around them. The result is, out of the many, one chorus creates a sense of contagious vitality and energy. That’s the pattern we can find in the healthiest systems.

The same is true in an ecosystem. Each species of plant and animal maintains their unique sense of self—frogs are gonna frog… ferns are gonna fern… yet they do so in a balanced relationship with the other species around them. The same is true of the systems we’re a part of—the “interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

It’s humbling, isn’t it? To know ourselves caught up in something so much bigger? I once heard an activist say that most people live their entire lives acting like main characters in some off-off-off-off Broadway one-man show. But in reality, fulfillment comes from knowing ourselves as supporting characters in that big-ticket show that was going on before we came on stage and will continue long after. In order to take our place in that show, though, we have to be entirely, uniquely ourselves while also dancing in step with those moving around us. It’s seeing myself as a cell in the body of the universe—a member in the body of the Divine—fully myself… fully human… yet also fully something bigger. This is integration: the intentional dance between linkage and differentiation.

Now, of course, this brings up a question, and that question points to the second thing we need to know about integration. What happens when that dance falls apart? What happens when there’s too much into linkage—reacting always to the actions of those around us? What happens when there’s too much differentiation—blocking our ears to others entirely? According to Dr. Siegel, a system with impaired integration will skew in one of two directions: it will either move towards rigidity or towards chaos.

Let’s return, for a second, to Dr. Siegel’s choir image. In Mindsight, he writes:

As you surely could predict, the single-note humming is unchanging, rigid—and after a while, dull and boring. The initial excitement and risk of volunteering gives way to the monotony of the task. The singers may be linked, but they cannot express their uniqueness, their individuality. When differentiation is blocked, integration cannot occur. Without the movement toward integration, the entire system moves away from complexity—away from harmony—and into rigidity.

On the other hand, when the singers close their ears and sing whatever they want, what emerges is cacophony, a chaotic outpouring of sound that often creates a sense of anxiety and distress in the listeners. Now there is no linkage—only differentiation. When integration is blocked in this way, we also move away from complexity, away from harmony. But this time we move toward chaos, not rigidity.

[…] It is the middle way between chaos and rigidity—the flow of independent voices linked together in harmony—that maximizes both complexity and vitality. This is the essence of integration.

We probably don’t have to think too hard to call to mind examples of systems we’ve been a part of that have drifted too far into either rigidity—where everything must be the same or we react violently to elements that simply aren’t supposed to be there… or chaos—where nothing is connected, nobody cares about what one another are doing, and everything falls into unstructured mess. The end result of either of these extremes is usually the same: the system, now full of anxiety, falls apart.

If you’re a Harry Potter person, think about Professor Umbridge on one side—rigid and insistent that every student abide by every rule or face harsh consequences. Then think about Bellatrix Lestrange on the other side, following every whim and chasing every feeling as she leaves behind a trail of victims cowering or dead. We could talk about the Pharisees in the gospels with their rules upon rules upon rules… or the Zealots speaking the language of swords and righteous indignation. I could talk about the ways this shows up in myself as I see my neighbor and feel the anxious frustration to fix them and make them more like me… or to disconnect from them entirely and say, “forget it.” In reality, it’s the middle way—the way of remaining rooted in my values while open and empathetic to the experiences of others—that maximizes complexity and vitality. That is what any system needs in order to thrive. A system with impaired integration will skew towards rigidity or towards chaos—both of which are invitations to wake up and act differently.

And that brings us to the final thing we have to know about integration—something more challenging. This is something that pulls our attention away from the macro-arenas of politics or environmentalism and invites it to the micro-arenas of our own mind. The final thing is this: Integration must take place in the mind and heart before it can ever take root in our systems or relationships. This work of integration, at its most healthy, happens from the inside out.

Though we may think of ourselves as single, unified selves, it’s actually more psychologically true to say that we’re a collection of selves housed in a single mind, all negotiating all of the time and directing the way we live. We all know what it’s like to have that part of ourselves that wants to eat the chocolate cake and the other part of ourselves that scolds the first part of ourselves, and then a third part of ourselves that comes in to make a very compelling argument about why you deserve it and how they negotiate that back and forth determines what ultimately happens. The truth is that no one of these voices is who you ultimately are, yet you are, unavoidably, all of them. E pluribus unum on the personal, psycho-spiritual level. And here’s the real kicker: How you learn to relate to those parts of yourself is how you learn to relate to other people who remind you of those parts.

Here's an example. I have a friend who works as a spiritual director, and a few years ago, she had the experience of sitting at a coffee shop, hearing an older man a few tables away make comments that were remarkably racially insensitive. Of course, her blood pressure started to go up, and she started to fume and think through all the things she might say or do—knowing that each of them would probably make things worse because of how much anger she felt towards that man. But somewhere in the midst of that process, she had a realization. She started to wonder—Is the reason I cannot stand the racist man sitting across from me that there is a part of me that is a whole lot like him, and I cannot stand that part, either? She started to think about it… to think about that part of herself who had grown up in the South and had internalized a lot of racist rhetoric and thinking. She started to think about how, as she’d come to learn better, she’d become ashamed of that part of herself, burying it deep down and getting angry with it whenever it would arise. How she’d learned to relate to that part of herself—in the system that was her own psyche—is how she’d come to relate to others who reminded her of it. The key, she said later, was re-learning how to relate to that part of herself. To see it, not as a malicious old man, but as a child, doing the best with what it was taught. As she learned to offer that part of herself more understanding and to relate to it more gently, she found her ability to engage with others also became healthier, and her ability to show up in the world as she wanted to became more attainable.

Dr. Richard Schwartz has created a whole field of study about this called Internal Family Systems Theory. It says that, as it is on the large scale, so it is also on the small scale. When the way we relate to ourselves is rigid—marred in reaction or attachment—we contribute to a system of rigidity ourselves of ourselves. When we relate to ourselves with chaos—ignoring crucial parts of ourselves while letting other parts lead us around without thinking—we contribute to a system of chaos in the world. I don’t think it’s all that difficult to look at the system that is our nation and see this at play. The key, of course, is to learn to relate to the self with integration: balancing linkage to our various parts with differentiation. No part is our whole selves, but every part is us.

So, it’s worth asking ourselves, what is the part of yourself you have the most trouble with? (Here’s a hint: If you can’t think of what it is, look at the people you can’t stand in the world, and it’ll give you a pretty good idea.) Is it a part that’s afraid it’s not good enough? That it doesn’t perform well enough? Is it a part that craves without ceasing—craves approval, stimulation, cake…? Is it a part that acts out when it gets scared, or hides away in a hole? If we want to help contribute to a healthy system around us, we have to learn to relate to every voice in our heads. We have to learn to relate to every feeling that comes up, every memory, every part of our story without attachment or aversion—to make room for all of it in the choir of who we are. Integration must take place in the mind and heart before it can ever take root in our systems or relationships.

So, when Du Simitiere brought this motto to his committee to design the US Seal, it seems, on this side of things, that he brought with it an invitation and a warning. E pluribus unum is an invitation to awareness—to be mindful of the ways “many” parts like you and I contribute to the “one” that we can only create together. It’s an invitation to contribute to a “one” that nourishes the well-being of every part of the “many.” But it’s also a warning—a warning that, when we don’t bring intentionality to this dance between the “many” and the “one,” the system we create will not only collapse, but may well do great harm before it does. And the key to making that difference is integration.

So, as we go from this place, may we be mindful of the ways they are linked to those around us, and the ways we are differentiated, allowing both to work together. May we be mindful of the areas of rigidity and the areas of chaos in the system around us so that they may serve as invitations to approach with renewed wisdom. And may we look for that same rigidity and chaos within ourselves, learning to relate to the parts of our mind with the same productive grace that we want to see in the world around us.

On every level, may we nurture this pattern of E pluribus unum in the healthiest possible way.

Amen.