Hello, friend.
Welcome back. I'm so glad you're here.
Last time, we talked about Brother Lawrence---that limping cook in a 17th-century monastery who found God in the clatter of pots and pans. He discovered something quiet and revolutionary: the sacred isn't somewhere else. It's right here, in the work, in the ordinary moments.
Today, I want to take you somewhere very different. From a monastery kitchen to a vast public hall. From one man's private practice to a spectacle that drew thousands.
Chicago, 1893. The World's Parliament of Religions.
It was the first time in history that leaders from the world's great faiths gathered together---not to fight, not to debate who was right, but to speak and to listen.
And the man who made it happen was a Presbyterian minister named John Henry Barrows.
He had a vision. A clear, confident vision of what would unfold when all these religious traditions came together.
But sometimes---sometimes we set things in motion that become much more than we imagined. We open a door expecting to control what walks through.
And the door swings wider than we ever planned.
Let me tell you what happened.
Picture this.
Chicago, September 11th, 1893. A Monday morning. The Hall of Columbus---a grand space inside what would become the Art Institute of Chicago.
Four thousand people packed into every seat. More outside, unable to get in, pressing against the doors just to hear what was happening inside.
On the stage, Reverend John Henry Barrows stands at the podium. Gavel in hand. Forty-six years old. Two years of his life poured into this moment.
To his left, the familiar. Black-coated ministers and bishops. Protestants of every stripe---Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians. Catholic clergy. Russian Orthodox priests in their vestments. The religious establishment of the Western world, arranged in somber rows.
To his right, the unfamiliar.
Orange robes. White robes. Turbans and strange headwear. Dark faces and Asian features. A Confucian scholar from China. A Jain monk from India. A white-robed Shinto priest. Buddhist teachers from Japan. Men whose names most Americans couldn't pronounce, representing faiths most Americans had never encountered.
The audience is silent. Breathless. Waiting.
Barrows looks out over the crowd. He's worked so hard for this. Ten thousand letters sent around the world. Endless meetings. Pushing back against critics who said it couldn't be done, shouldn't be done.
The Archbishop of Canterbury refused to participate. Called the whole idea offensive. "The Christian religion is the one religion," he wrote. How could it sit as an equal among others?
But Barrows pressed forward. Because he believed---truly believed---that when these traditions came together, when they shared their wisdom and their practices, something important would be revealed.
He just didn't know what.
He raises the gavel. The room holds its breath.
And in that instant before he brings it down---before history pivots in a direction he doesn't yet see---I wonder if he feels it.
The sense that he's opening something he can't close.
The gavel falls.
The World's Parliament of Religions begins.
His name was John Henry Barrows.
Born in 1847. A child of the American North, educated at Yale, trained at Union Theological Seminary in New York and Andover Newton in Massachusetts. Sharp mind. Powerful preacher. By the 1890s, he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Chicago---a prominent position in a city that was trying very hard to prove it was more than stockyards and rail yards.
Chicago wanted the world to see it as cultured. Progressive. A city of the future.
And in 1893, they got their chance.
The World's Columbian Exposition---a massive world's fair celebrating four hundred years since Columbus reached the Americas. It was spectacular. Daniel Burnham's "White City"---gleaming neoclassical buildings arranged around lagoons and fountains. Exhibits from around the world showcasing technology, industry, art, everything humanity had achieved.
Millions of visitors came. It was the event of the decade.
But a lawyer and Swedenborgian layman named Charles Carroll Bonney had an idea. He thought the fair was too materialistic. All that machinery and progress, but what about the moral and spiritual dimensions of human civilization?
So Bonney proposed a series of "Congresses"---gatherings where people could discuss the important questions. Medicine. Education. Women's rights. Labor. And above all---religion.
Religion, Bonney believed, was the most important congress of all.
He needed someone to chair it. Someone respected, organized, tireless. Someone who could manage the impossible logistics of bringing the world's religious leaders to Chicago.
He chose John Henry Barrows.
And Barrows said yes.
That was in 1891. Two years before the event.
For two years, Barrows worked. He assembled a General Committee. They crafted a letter---an invitation---expressing their hope that this gathering would reveal "the religious harmonies and unities of humanity." They wanted to show the moral and spiritual forces at the root of human progress.
Ten thousand copies of this invitation went out. Personal letters. Sent to religious leaders across the globe.
The responses were... mixed.
Some were thrilled. Max Müller, the great scholar of comparative religion, called it unprecedented in human history, though he couldn't attend himself.
Others were curious but cautious. Some saw it as a chance to clarify misconceptions about their traditions. Others---more honestly---saw it as a chance to prove their religion superior to all the rest.
And some were hostile.
Barrows' own Presbyterian Church opposed it. Many evangelical leaders, including the famous revivalist Dwight L. Moody, condemned the whole idea. The Sultan of Turkey refused to allow Muslim participation. The Archbishop of Canterbury sent a letter dripping with disapproval---this Parliament assumed an equality between religions that he could not accept.
But Barrows pushed forward.
And slowly, acceptances came. From India. From Japan. From Ceylon. From across America. Catholics agreed to participate. Jews. Representatives of traditions most Americans had never heard of---Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Shinto.
By September 1893, they had done it.
Seventeen days. September 11th through the 27th. The world's first Parliament of Religions.
On that first morning, when Barrows stood at the podium looking out at four thousand faces, at the strange and wonderful assembly on the stage behind him, he must have felt something like pride.
He had made the impossible happen.
Now he just had to see what it would become.
Here's what you have to understand about John Henry Barrows and what he thought was going to happen.
He wasn't a narrow man. He wasn't one of those preachers who thought every other religion was simply false, simply evil, simply doomed.
He was progressive for his time. Educated. Curious about other faiths. He genuinely believed in dialogue---in listening, in learning, in bringing people together.
But he also had assumptions. Deep assumptions about how the world worked. About how religion worked.
Barrows believed in what they called "religious evolution." The idea that humanity's spiritual understanding had developed over time, growing more refined, more complete, more true with each passing age.
And at the top of that evolutionary ladder? Christianity.
Not because Christians were better people. But because Christianity, in his view, represented the fullest expression of religious truth. The culmination of everything humanity had been reaching toward.
Other religions weren't wrong, exactly. They were incomplete. They were earlier stages. Pieces of the puzzle.
But Christianity held all the pieces.
He used this metaphor: religion is like white light from heaven, broken into many colored fragments by the prisms of human culture. Each tradition caught one color---one aspect of truth. But Christianity? Christianity was the white light itself. Pure. Complete. Universal.
So when Barrows organized the Parliament, he wasn't trying to trick anyone. He wasn't setting a trap.
He genuinely believed that bringing all these traditions together would reveal this truth naturally. Not through argument or force, but through simple comparison.
When people heard the wisdom of the Buddha alongside the words of Christ, when they compared the teachings of Confucius with the Gospel, when they saw all these traditions laid out side by side---surely they would see what he saw.
That Christianity was the fulfillment. The destination all the others were pointing toward.
He even had a phrase for it: "the survival of the fittest." Borrowed from Darwin, but applied to religion. He believed the best religion would naturally rise to the top in any fair comparison.
And the best religion, he was certain, was his own.
Each day of the Parliament opened the same way. With the Lord's Prayer. Everyone---Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Zoroastrian---reciting the words Jesus taught.
Barrows called it the "universal prayer."
He meant it kindly. He saw it as a gesture of inclusion, a common ground everyone could stand on.
But think about what that assumption revealed. That Christian prayer could be universal. That everyone, whatever their tradition, would naturally recognize its truth.
Barrows wanted dialogue. He wanted understanding. He wanted what he called "fraternal union."
But he wanted it on his terms. Within his framework. Leading to his conclusion.
He thought he was organizing a demonstration. A showcase. A friendly but clear revelation of Christian superiority through the very act of generous inclusion.
What he got was something else entirely.
He thought he was opening a door just wide enough to prove a point.
He didn't realize he was opening it wide enough for the world to walk through.
I remember that first morning.
I've watched a lot of gatherings in my long life. Councils and conclaves. Assemblies where people come together thinking they know what will happen.
This was one of those moments where you could feel it---the space between intention and outcome. Between what someone plans and what actually unfolds.
Barrows thought he was orchestrating a demonstration. I watched him orchestrate a transformation.
It started almost immediately. That first day, September 11th.
The speeches began. Western voices, mostly---exactly what Barrows expected. Measured. Theological. Familiar patterns of thought.
And then came a young monk from India. Swami Vivekananda. Orange robes. Unknown. Nervous, actually---I saw him touch his hand to his heart, silently praying to the goddess Saraswati for courage before he stood.
He opened his mouth and said: "Sisters and brothers of America."
Seven words.
The audience erupted. A standing ovation that lasted two full minutes. People on their feet, applauding, not even knowing why yet. Just responding to something in those words---that simple recognition of kinship, of equality.
I smiled. Saraswati and I go way back. She takes her job seriously, and she answered his prayer beautifully.
When the applause finally died down, Vivekananda continued. He thanked them in the name of "the most ancient order of monks in the world." In the name of "the mother of religions." In the name of "millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects."
And then he said something Barrows hadn't planned for: "I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true."
All religions as true.
Not pieces of truth. Not steps toward truth. True. Complete. Each in their own way.
I watched Barrows' face. He was smiling. Applauding. But I wonder if he felt it yet---the ground shifting under his careful plans.
Because Vivekananda wasn't presenting Hinduism as a beautiful but incomplete fragment waiting for Christian fulfillment. He was presenting it as a complete vision of reality. One that didn't need Christianity to complete it.
And the audience loved him for it.
Over the next seventeen days, I watched this pattern repeat. Speaker after speaker from the East---Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Zoroastrians---not asking for acceptance as junior partners in a Christian world. Offering their traditions as equals. As teachers. As gifts.
And Americans listened. Really listened.
Vivekananda became a sensation. His portrait appeared on posters around Chicago. People waited hours to hear him speak. Not because he confirmed their beliefs---because he challenged them. Because he offered something they hadn't known they were hungry for.
Virchand Gandhi, the Jain teacher, spoke about ahimsa---non-violence toward all living beings. Not as an exotic curiosity, but as a moral principle the West desperately needed.
Buddhist teachers spoke about meditation, about the nature of suffering, about paths to enlightenment that had nothing to do with sin or salvation or any Christian framework.
And something happened that Barrows never intended.
The Parliament didn't become a demonstration of Christian supremacy.
It became a marketplace of spiritual ideas. A genuine conversation. A moment when Americans---thousands of them---realized that the religious world was bigger, richer, more diverse than they'd ever imagined.
Barrows tried to maintain control. In his closing remarks, he emphasized that Christianity had "pervaded the conference from first to last." He noted with satisfaction that the Lord's Prayer had been recited daily. He wrote later that "the Parliament ended at Calvary."
But he'd lost control of the narrative.
Because what happened after the Parliament was this: those Eastern teachers didn't go home and leave Christianity unchallenged in America.
They stayed. They toured. They taught.
Vivekananda traveled across America for years, founding Vedanta societies. Virchand Gandhi created a lecture circuit, introducing Jainism to thousands of Americans who'd never heard the word before.
That circuit---those audiences, those venues, that infrastructure of spiritual curiosity Barrows had inadvertently created---it became a pathway. A road map for other teachers who would come later.
Barrows himself went on a missionary tour of Asia a few years later. Still trying to spread Christianity. Still believing in its supremacy.
But the door he'd opened? It swung both ways now.
And it would never close again.
America had walked into that Parliament claiming to be a cosmopolitan nation, open to the world.
It walked out having to live up to that claim.
There was no going back.
Think about the world you live in.
A woman who grew up in Somalia sits in the United States Congress, wearing her hijab. A Sikh officer serves in the military, turban and all. There's a Buddhist temple in a suburban strip mall between the dry cleaner and the pizza place. Hindu festivals happen in public parks with city permits and police directing traffic.
This seems normal now. Unremarkable, even.
But it's not. It's actually extraordinary.
Because somewhere along the way, America made a decision---not a legal decision, but a deeper cultural one---that faith can travel with people. That when someone migrates halfway around the world, they can bring their practice, their beliefs, their visible expressions of devotion with them.
And those things have legitimacy here. They belong here. They're not foreign infiltrations to be tolerated temporarily until people "see the light" and convert.
They're American.
So here's the question: where did we get the social permission for this?
The First Amendment existed long before 1893. Religious freedom was written into law from the beginning. But law and culture aren't the same thing.
For most of American history, there was an unspoken assumption: you could come here from anywhere, but you melted. You assimilated. And that included religious assimilation.
Christianity---particularly Protestant Christianity---was the default. The water everyone swam in. Other religions? They were private matters. Foreign things. Exotic curiosities. Things people would eventually leave behind as they became "real Americans."
Or they were missionary targets. People to be saved, converted, brought into the fold. Not people to learn from.
And then came 1893.
And John Henry Barrows, without meaning to, created something that couldn't be undone.
By putting those speakers on that stage---the Swami in his orange robes, the Jain monk, the Buddhist teachers, the Muslim representatives---not as curiosities but as equals, not as primitives but as authorities, he granted them something profound.
Public legitimacy.
When Vivekananda stood before four thousand Americans and spoke about Hinduism not as a quaint tradition waiting to be superseded by Christianity, but as a complete and valid path to truth---and when those Americans stood and applauded for two minutes---something shifted.
When Virchand Gandhi explained Jain principles of non-violence and compassion, and Americans listened with respect, wrote down his words, invited him to speak in their cities---permission was granted.
Not legal permission. Cultural permission. Social permission.
The permission to say: your faith has legitimacy here. Your wisdom has value here. You don't have to hide it or abandon it or apologize for it.
And once that permission was granted, once those voices had been heard and honored on that public stage, you couldn't take it back.
What followed wasn't just ideas floating in the air. It was infrastructure.
Virchand Gandhi created a lecture circuit---actual venues, actual audiences, actual pathways for teachers from other traditions to travel across America and be heard. Vivekananda founded Vedanta societies that still exist today. Communities formed around these teachings. Spaces opened up.
And other teachers would follow those same paths. The routes Gandhi mapped, the audiences he cultivated, the social permission he helped establish---they became roads for others to travel.
We live in the world Barrows accidentally built.
Religious diversity isn't a problem we're trying to solve. It's a reality we inhabit. Different traditions in conversation with each other. Learning from each other. Challenging each other. Not because anyone proved their religion was superior, but because we discovered conversation was possible.
It's not that all beliefs are the same. They're not. The differences matter. The distinct wisdom of each tradition matters.
But we've found a way to let those differences coexist with dignity. To recognize that truth can come from many sources, expressed in many languages, walking many paths.
Barrows wanted missionary work---faith traveling outward to convert the world to Christianity.
What he accidentally enabled was something else: faith traveling with people and keeping its integrity. Not melting into a Christian default, but remaining itself. Distinct. Honored. Legitimate.
That Somali woman in Congress? That Sikh officer? That Buddhist temple?
They exist because in 1893, a Presbyterian minister opened a door thinking he was going to prove his faith superior to all others.
Instead, he proved that the door could open both ways.
That legitimacy could be shared, not hoarded.
That America---that the world---was big enough for all of it.
He wanted to demonstrate Christian supremacy.
He accidentally demonstrated that conversation, real conversation, was possible.
And we're still living in the world that conversation created.
So let me ask you something.
When have you opened a door expecting to control what walked through?
Maybe it was a conversation you started, thinking you knew where it would go. A project you launched with a clear vision of the outcome. A question you asked, certain of the answer you'd receive.
And then---it became something else. Something bigger. Something you hadn't planned for.
That moment when you realize: this isn't mine anymore. This has taken on a life of its own.
It can feel like losing control. And maybe it is.
But what if that's not always a bad thing?
Barrows spent two years planning the Parliament. Two years of letters and meetings and logistics. He had a vision. Clear. Confident. He knew what would happen when all these traditions came together.
And he was wrong.
Not wrong to bring them together. Wrong about what it would mean.
His vision was too small. His assumptions too narrow. The outcome too big for his framework to contain.
But here's the thing---the thing I've watched happen again and again across the centuries:
Sometimes our best contributions to the world come from exactly this. From opening doors we can't control. From setting things in motion that become larger than our intentions.
From letting go.
Not giving up. Not abandoning responsibility.
But recognizing that the thing you started might need to become something you didn't plan. Something that serves purposes you never imagined.
Barrows wanted to prove a point. He ended up changing a culture.
He wanted confirmation. He created transformation.
And maybe---maybe that's worth thinking about in your own life.
What are you holding too tightly? What vision are you clinging to that might need to become something else?
What door might you need to open, even if you can't control what walks through?
I'm not saying throw away your intentions. Your values. Your beliefs.
I'm saying: be willing to be surprised by what they create in the world.
Be willing to discover that the thing you thought you were doing was actually just the beginning of something much larger.
Barrows never abandoned his Christianity. He remained a Presbyterian minister until his death. He still believed what he believed.
But he created space for something he didn't expect. And the world is different because of it.
Maybe that's enough.
Maybe that's everything.
So there he was, John Henry Barrows, on that first morning of the Parliament.
Gavel raised. Four thousand people waiting. The stage filled with faces from around the world.
He brings down the gavel. The speeches begin.
And then---a few speakers in---a young monk from India stands up. Orange robes. Nervous. Unknown. His name is Swami Vivekananda, though almost no one in that audience has heard of him yet.
He opens his mouth and says: "Sisters and brothers of America."
And the room explodes.
A standing ovation. Two minutes. Four thousand people on their feet, not even knowing why yet. Just responding to something in those simple words. That recognition. That kinship.
Next time, I want to tell you about him. About that speech. About what made it so powerful that it's still being quoted more than a century later.
About how a young monk from Calcutta became the most talked-about figure at the Parliament---and changed the way America thought about spirituality forever.
About what happens when someone speaks a truth the world didn't know it was ready to hear.
That's next time.
For now, remember this: sometimes the most important thing we do is open a door. Even if---especially if---we can't control what walks through.
Much love.
I am, Harmonia.