How best to describe the Inner Light Center in Salt Lake City.
Think of a wok filled with vegetables — where each vegetable represents a book of scripture or a ritual from one of the world's spiritual traditions.
Or maybe a color wheel featuring a hundred colors from religious history.
"From the outside, people might feel we're not rooted," says Jo Anne Casey, who works with Barbara Dahl and George Garff as Inner Light ministers. "But from the inside we're very grounded. Our roots go deep into many traditions."
The Inner Light Center is not unique in Utah. There are several groups in the Salt Lake City area alone meeting regularly to "welcome and honor the wisdom of all traditions" and "nurture individual and universal transformation." But the Inner Light Center serves as a good example of movements where people hope to "find a deeper unity" in the world around them.
At the 10 a.m. Sunday service, for example, it's not unusual for Casey to knead Sanskrit, Zen and American Indian teachings into her sermons. During the week, study groups may read a book, work with Hindu mandala wheels, practice yoga, form a "drumming circle" or delve into "breathwork" and "rebirthing."
For Halloween, the center sponsored a "come as you were" costume party, where those who believe in reincarnation dressed up as their former selves. For All-Souls Day, Casey has planned a Sunday sermon about honoring ancestors — not only our "bloodline" ancestors, but ancestors from the "milkline" (our mentors) "storyline" (famous leaders) and "non-human line."
"We study all traditions looking for the universal," says Ellen Vlasic, a founding member.
"Every tradition has some form of prayer or meditation, and some form of spiritual music," adds board member Elizabeth Page. "The Inner Light Center gives us a chance to peek behind the scenes — to look at the Dead Sea scrolls, the Kabbalah — to examine the traditions that are available to other people."
When it began in 1990, the Inner Light Center was actually focused on just one tradition. It was part of the "Teachings of the Inner Christ" movement. With time, however, it expanded its ideas and expanded its membership. Today Sunday Services draw about 25 people. The book study group gets about 30. Other special classes have been divided as numbers increase. In fact, the center has outgrown its space at 470 E. 3900 South and is looking to take over an old home on 4500 South that offers more room.
About 80 percent of the members are women — many of them looking for alternatives to tightly structured religious traditions or hoping to reawaken spiritual feelings in themselves.
"We are all in the process of finding out about ourselves, or recreating ourselves," says Casey.
Years ago, of course, the Inner Light movement would have been dismissed by many as just another "New Age" affectation. And it does carry many of the trappings of " '60s spirituality" with its penchant for exotic, Eastern music and meditation techniques. But many scholars see places like Inner Light as just another example of the evolution of religion in America. Inner Light may look novel, but it's really just part of an ongoing process.
"America is a melting pot place," explains Colleen McDannell, an expert on religion at the University of Utah. "It's a place where people have always blended religions. That has always been a part of the fabric of the country."
McDannell says people tend to believe the Puritans and others came to America from the Old Country toting a pure form of Protestantism with them, when in truth all religions are in flux, always a work in progress. Inner Light is simply a new voice in an ancient choir.
For those who attend Inner Light, however, it is a voice that not only sounds familiar but speaks of the purpose and fulfillment that all religions hope to offer.
"We want people to open up to inner-knowing," says Vlasic, "to find the 'knower' inside that knows."
And if that search involves "tools" that range from crystal bowls used to grow microchips to ancient Alaskan totem poles, well, as the French theologian Teilhard de Chardin would say, "Faith has need of all the truth."
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com