The problem is, when we get too attached to one particular story—a story about who we are… and what kind of world we’re living in… what kind of people are around us… we lose perspective. Our perception gets narrow. In short, we suffer, and we cause suffering to those around us. 

A talk given on June 8, 2025, for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola.

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.

I’d like to take a closer look at the Palm Sunday story. I’d like to look at the way it’s typically told, at something that happened that changed the way I read it, and then I’d like to walk through the story to ask ourselves: What does this mean for us?

This fear of Judgment produced no shortage of shame and guilt in me, and I know I wasn’t the only one. The irony is, even though I wanted to let it go entirely, the more seriously I take spirituality, the more I realize you can’t really shake it. Not entirely, anyway. In fact, the language of Judgment—as problematic and weighted as it may be—may actually be poetically pointing us towards a deeper, practical truth.

The Adversary is as essential in writing a good fictional story as it is in living a healthy spiritual story. Your main antagonistic force is that which forces your protagonist forward, bringing to the surface what your story is actually about, whether fictionally or spiritually.

The Gap is an inconvenient element, sometimes incredibly painful, but from the meta-view of telling a good story, it’s unavoidable. Furthermore, it’s only because of the Gap that any kind of growth or transformation becomes possible. As McKee says, it’s only by the power of the Gap that a character is forced to “dig more deeply into [their] human capacity” to be able to move forward and become more fully their True Selves.

What if, despite all the evidence to the contrary, people are inherently good and empathetic? What if we are in a truer and more beautiful than we usually let ourselves believe?

I don’t really care whether reincarnation is real in an afterlife sense, but I know that some of the most beautiful stories I’ve encountered have been reincarnation stories. Over the years, I’ve become an evangelist for these stories. I haven’t taken to standing on street corners yet, but I’m close.

Sometimes I panic about our ecological situation. I’ve gotten better at coping, but still. Sometimes a rogue fact will fly across my field of vision—some well-meaning statistic or off-hand comment—and bang, there it is. “That funny feeling,” as Bo Burnham calls it. The dropping sensation. The O God. It’s going to end. How did I forget? It’s like the anxiety waits until my guard is down and then, when I least expect it, it pounces.

What if, paradoxically, the best way to help others change is to accept them, just as they are?

Epiphany is an incredibly underrated holiday. Traveling wizards. Space magic. Espionage. Could a plastic Nativity scene ever really do justice to the fantasy sci-fi political drama that is Epiphany?