The Meaning of the Rainbow Bridge

Why We Chose This Name

There are moments in history when humanity finds itself standing between worlds.

One world is familiar, even if it is painful. The other has not yet been built. Between them there is a crossing, a threshold, a path that requires courage, truth, and community.

For us, that crossing is the Rainbow Bridge.

The name Rainbow Bridge Church was not chosen because rainbows are soft or decorative. It was chosen because, across cultures and across time, the rainbow appears again and again as a sacred threshold. A meeting point. A place where worlds touch.

When we began listening deeply to the stories that live beneath cultures, mythologies, and spiritual traditions, one pattern kept rising like light through rain: the rainbow is almost always a bridge.

Hawaiian Mythology: Anuenue as Living Presence

In Hawaiian culture, the anuenue is not just weather. It is alive with meaning. It is a pathway between realms, a sign taht the een and unseen are brushing against each other.

In some mo’olelo (stories), people become rainbows, continuing to exist in luminous form after death. The rainbow becomes a living memory, an ancestral presence, a reminder that spirit is never far away.

For us, this matters deeply. Rainbow Bridge Church was born from land-based relationship and from the understanding that healing is relational. The bridge is not abstract. It is something we stand inside together.

Greek Tradition: The Rainbow as Messenger

In ancient Greek tradition, the rainbow belonged to Iris, the divine mssenger who traveled between the gods and humanity. The rainbow was her path, a channel through which communication flowed.

This idea resonates with our work because we believe healign happens through transmision: truth spoken honestly, stories shared bravely, wisdom passed from one heart to another.

The bridge is communication. It is connection restored.

Indigenous Australian Traditions: Creation and Renewal

Many Indigenous Australian traditions speak of the Rainbow Serpent, an ancient creator presence connected to water, fertility, and the shaping of the land itself.

Here, the rainbow is not only a bridge between worlds but a force of creation and transformation. It carries noth power and responsibility. Water gives life, but it also asks humans to live in right relationship with the earth.

This echoes the heart of our mission. Healing is not separate from land. Restoration of self and restoration of community move together.

The Thread That Connects Them

Across these traditions, the rainbow holds a shared pattern:

• A pathway between realms

• A messenger between worlds

• A symbol of transformation after change or hardship

• A living reminder that spirit and earth are not separate

We did not choose this name to claim ownership over any one culture’s meaning. We chose it because cultures separated by oceans and time have looked to the rainbow and recognized teh saem pattern: a crossing place. A moment where heaven and earth touch. A reminder of transformation after the storm.

The rainbow appears wherever light meets water, wherever contrast creates beauty, wherever something broken begins to refract into something whole again.

Rainbow Bridge Church exists as that crossing place.
A bridge between spirit and science.
…between ancestral wisdom and modern healing.
…between isolation and belonging.
…between survival and purposeful living.

This is not about escaping the world. It is about learning how to walk across the bridge together, carrying our stories, ourcultures, and our humanity toward a more conscious way of being.

Why I Chose Keep the Word “Church”

Words carry memory. They carry wounds. They carry power.

When I began building what would eventually become Rainbow Bridge Church, I spent a lot of time sitting with the question: Do I even want to use the word “church”?

For many people, that word brings up pain, control, exclusion, or disappointment. I understand that deeply. I have felt all fo those things myself.

And still, I chose to keep it.

Because sometimes the most radical thing we can do is not abandon a word, but reclaim it.

Church as a Feminine Principle

Before church became an institution, before hierarchy and power structures shaped it, church was something far more ancietn. It was people gather. Feeding one another. Singing through grief. Holding life together when eveything else had fallen apart.

That is a feminine principle.

Across cultures and throughout history, when wars ended and societies cracked open, it was women who gather the fragments. Women who buried the dead, fed the childre, tended the broke bodies, and rebuilt meaning. Women who carried spitirual labor quietly and consistently while the world tried to reset itself.

The church, at its best, was never just a building. It was a shelter created by human hands and human hearts.

And women have always been the ones keeping the fire lit.

Where I First Felt Belonging

For me, church was the first place I felt belonging.

The Black church, especially, held something profound. It held rhythm, survival, community, and a kind of spiritual honesty that made space for both grief and joy at the same time. There was music that lived in the body. There was collective prayer that felt like breathing together.

It was there that I first met the masculine face of God not as an idea, but as a presence.

And it was also through church that I eventually experienced disillusionment.

Because when institutions lose alignment with love, the people inside them feel it first.

I became angry. I became distant from God. I questioned everything I thought I believed. And like so many others, I carried the ache of feeling betrayed by a space that was supposed to be safe.

The Tension I Couldn’t Ignore

There came a moment where I realized something important: My anger wasn’t proof that church was wrong. It was proof that I believed it could be more.

I didn’t want to throw away the idea of church because I knew what it could be. I had tasted it. I had seen glimpses of spiritual refuge, belonging, and collective healing.

The problem was never the concept itself. The problem was what we allowed it to become.

Reclaiming the Word

Church shouldn’t be a bad word.

Church should be a place where people come to breathe again.
A place where questions are welcome and encouraged.
A place where healing is practical and embodied.
A place where spirituality serves life rather than controlling it.

I chose to keep the word because I believe it can still mean sanctuary.

I want to reclaim church as something feminine in spirit and structure:

• Nurturing instead of shaming

• Gathering instead of dividing

• Restoring instead of demanding perfection

• Listening instead of preaching at people.

This is not about erasing tradition. It is about returning to its most human purpose.

A Church for the Future

Rainbow Bridge Church exists because I refuse to beleive that spirituality and safety must exist apart from each other.

I believe that church can evolve into something honest enough to hold trauma and strong enough to hold joy. A space where science and spirit sit at the saem table. A space where belonging is not conditional.

A church where people don’t have to pretend to be whole in order to enter.

Because the truth is simple:

We don’t come to church because we are perfect. We come beacuse we are human. And humanity deserves refuge.