FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

Is Another World Possible?

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Today, I doubt. I doubt that Faith House is possible. I feel depressed about it. I wonder if I should quit.

All afternoon, I drove aimlessly around Orange County, stopping to eat, only to walk out without food, to just sit in the car. It is not that I don’t have anything to do. There is so much to do, I don’t know even where to start to make a dent on the list. My inner monologues go in circles, “How did I ever get myself into this? The city will crush our daily lives. Resistance of established religiosity will crush people’s spirits. New supporters will not step up and the current ones will forget about us. People will never come. . . How did I get myself into this? The city will crush out daily lives. Resistance of established …” On and on the tape goes.

After sitting in my car in a parking lot staring at nothing for fifteen minutes, I say a prayer and walk into a coffee shop one block further down the road, and resolve to tackle the to-do list. There, I sit aimlessly for another half hour. I drift from self-pity to fear. I dread finding an apartment in New York that is too small and too expensive, that I start talking to myself, then laughing my pain out loud about, then talking to myself again as I walk back to the car.

At times, during the last twelve months, I have been propelled forward by the sheer happiness of what Faith House can be. But on days like this, I feel sad and discouraged. It takes enormous energy to comfort myself.

That’s when I turn to my friends for glimmers of hope. Recently, my friend from Emergent Village, Damien O’Farrell e-mailed me a picture that his friend had just taken in Israel. It’s a picture of a wall that separates Muslims and Jews.

Somewhere in my files, I found the original quote from Arundhati Roy:

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen . . . with our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe . . . . Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Today, I had a noisy day, the voices in my head chanting songs of fear I have picked up along the way from the empires of our religions, nations, and corporations. They have been yelling one thing, but God has been whispering another.

What do you think my friends? Is a new world possible? Has it been possible in your country, in your town, in your family? What do you hear God whispering while the empires are yelling? Your advice, stories, poems, and prayers have power and influence. Please share them with us on the web site. If a new world is possible, we need you to help us hear her breathing.

Farewell CrossWalk

~ by Samir Selmanovic

I didn’t look forward to saying goodbye to CrossWalk, a wonderful Christian congregation in Loma Linda, Southern California, where I have been serving as a pastor for the last four years. There were many reasons to stay. Smog and the punishing desert sun were eclipsed by kind and thoughtful people, a dedicated leadership, an all-embracing Californian spirit, and countless beautiful memories of life together. Last Saturday night the CrossWalk community came together to bless us and release us to Faith House interfaith ministry in the New York City.

There would not be Faith House project without CrossWalk. This congregation has done far more than give me several months to prepare for pursuing this dream. They have nourished us and the dream.

Michael Knecht, founding pastor of CrossWalk, had a vision of what CrossWalk could be and what it is becoming today. Pastor Jessica Robbins, Pastor Jeff Gang, and I joined for the ride, and our time in the team, at least sometimes, was the fulfillment of a dream all pastors have when joining the ministry. Cheryl Lake, Laura Hertel, and Phil Mathew joined our staff team to complement our deficiencies, inspire many, and keep pastors us on the right path.

Together we formulated the vision of “learning to love well,” which we will take with us as we move east. We also led the church towards a passionate commitment to social justice, international involvement, and a fearless and faithful exploration of Christian theology for out time.

The love and care of CrossWalk will always stay with my family and me, providing strength and wisdom for the future. Although Faith House will not be a Christian church as such, we are doing this because of Christ and because of our faith that God is present and wants to be discovered in lives of all people.

I want to thank twenty five people whose words last Saturday evening brought us both sadness and joy as we relived our experiences together. Thank you for your friendship. May it continue forever.

I also thank the Southeastern California Conference for its extraordinary progressive and empowering leadership. Your trust not only in God but also in the people you lead has resulted in many changed lives, the formation of vibrant communities of faith, a stronger global church, and changes of historic importance. You have transformed some of my places of hurt into places of strength and dispelled much of my cynicism about organized religion that developed over my years in ministry.

Leaving CrossWalk and SECC has been one of the most painful decisions for our family. We have to go, but our love for you will always remain.

Samir, Vesna, Ena, and Leta Selmanovic

A Sabbath Poem (Kabir)

I JUST LAUGH
~ by Kabir (c. 1440-1518)

If I told you the truth about God, you might think I was an idiot.
If I lied to you about the Beautiful One you might parade me through the streets shouting,“This guy is a genius!”
This world has its pants on backwards. Most carry their values and knowledge in a jug that has a big hole in it.
Thus having a clear grasp of the situation if I am asked anything these days
I just laugh!

(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002, on this website)

Seeking More Than a Conversation

~ by Justin S. Kim, an attorney who lives and works in Washington, D.C.

When I first read about the Faith House, I was impressed.  It is an ambitious plan supported by a strong list of endorsements. I loved the idea—but it was an idea for New York City.  I live near Washington, D.C.  And I’m not a minister or professor of religion, but an attorney who spends much of the day in front of a computer.  What does an interfaith community in another city have to do with me? 

Religion has been described as a faux pas of polite conversation.  Scratch the surface of a person's religion and faith, and squirming and shifting begins.  We have all seen religion and faith lead to difference and division.  Perhaps this is why we don't think of the workplace as a safe place for serious conversations about religion.   

Yet despite all this, every day, people engage in casual conversations about faith and religion--in schools and offices, over meals and coffee, and between persons of different faiths and nonfaith.  But after promising beginnings, these conversations often end prematurely.  They last over a lunch but then are put on hold when everyone returns to work.

My first conversation about religion at work was also the first sustained encounter with a person who did not share a Christian background.  A colleague and I shared an office for a year.  He was a secular Jew who spent much of his life in Brooklyn; I was born, raised, and schooled in a cocoon of suburban Adventism.  Occasionally, our mutual curiosity led to conversations about faith and religion.  As a secular Jew, he found Adventism to be an amusing puzzle--a Christian denomination with some decidedly Jewish traditions.  (As we would leave work on Friday afternoons, he would wish me "Shabbat shalom" with a big grin.  We laughed at the irony of the Christian who kept the Sabbath and the Jew who did not.)  My political leanings also confounded his idea of evangelical Christianity, which seemed largely derived from reading the New York Times.  Similarly, he was a paradox to me--a secular, agnostic Jew who nevertheless attended temple on holy days.

Over that year, we had engaging discussions about religious doctrine and practice, the nature of God as revealed in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice, and the role of religion in public life and global affairs.  But that was it--a series of interesting conversations.  At the end of that year, we both moved on to different jobs in different cities. 

When you read this, I hope you feel a twinge of loss--maybe a familiar loss that you too have felt.  I wonder how many conversations share the same fate and whether with each repetition, if another opportunity for sharing, understanding, and healing is lost.  Many of us no longer live in a place where entire countries, cities, and neighborhoods share one faith.  Sadly, the diversity of faith and nonfaith in our communities often leads to division and misunderstanding.  A byproduct of this dysfunction is the loneliness and isolation that we feel, even in the dense crowds of city life. 

The Faith House is not primarily a place for interfaith dialogue amongst the clergy.  It’s for all of us who long for our faith to be more intertwined with our daily lives--at work, at home, in our neighborhoods and communities.  When we can’t experience matters of faith and religion with those who regularly come into our lives, it limits our faith.  That is why I am heartened by the Faith House and the idea of a place devoted to supporting and encouraging shared experiences across faiths and religions.  It gives me hope for the conversations yet to come.

A Sabbath Poem (Whittemore)

   PSALM   
   ~ by Reed Whittemore

   The Lord feeds some of His prisoners better than others.
   It could be said of Him that He is not a just god but an
      indifferent god.
   That He is not be trusted to reward the righteous and
   punish the unscrupulous.
   That He maketh the poor poorer but is otherwise
      undependable.

   It could be said of Him that it is His school of the germane
      that produced the Congressional Record.
   That it is His vision of justice that gave us cost accounting.

   It could be said of Him that though we walk with Him all
      the days of our lives we will never fathom Him
   Because He is empty.

   These are the dark images of our Lord
   That make it seem needful for us to pray not unto Him
   But ourselves.
   But when we do that we find that indeed we are truly lost
   And we rush back into the safer fold, impressed by His care
      for us.

(from Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor, Penguin, 2002)

Samir Shares Faith House With Seattle

~ by Steve Hatzman (a report from Seattle)

Samir visited the 500 member Green Lake Adventist Church of Seattle on February 10 in part of a nation wide effort to share the vision of the Faith House project. The day started with a Q & A session followed by his main service message titled "Finding Our God in the Other" which can be found in the "Featured Sermon" section on this website. After the program, Samir was invited to a members' house for a luncheon and another opportunity for curious church goers to ask Samir questions about the project.

The Faith House ministry and Samir treasure opportunities like these because feedback from members like those of Green Lake Adventist Church play a vital role to the development of this project. Thanks for all your input and support Seattle and see you again soon!

The Hole in How We Do It

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

How we connect our beliefs with our everyday lives and how we connect our beliefs with the lives of those around us in ways that make sense to them and to us, must be a constant challenge to our faith.

And it is in this aspect of Christian religious practice that it seems we have a growing hole. I think for many believers we are victims of history—the history of our belief system itself and of changing social attitudes and beliefs. And it is our success in meeting the challenges of previous generations that has left us exposed when trying to connect in the present.

My faith tradition began in a time and place in which the majority of the population were practicing, church-going Christians of one variety or another. In this environment, the emerging faith community focused on demonstrating to other Christians why some aspects of their traditional faith were not in accord with the teachings of the Bible. We didn’t always convince them, but at least we could engage in a worthwhile discussion and they would have some understanding of our point of view.

In the 20th century, our tradition—and Christianity generally—faced new frontiers. With the growing acceptance of evolutionary theory and atheism, we felt the need to employ scientific methodology to describe our faith and to bolster the foundations of our beliefs. We readily employed the rationality of Christian apologetics and the science of creationism to challenge the assumptions of non-believers. We didn’t always convince them, but at least we could engage in a spirited debate and at least had a hearing for our views.

Today, both these “strategies” have their place and their appropriate audiences. But as the audiences most receptive to these approaches diminish in many societies around the world, the hole in how we do this grows. With an increased interest in spirituality but a declining interest in formal religion, the majority of the population has shifted away from both entrenched Christianity and avowed atheism. This same shift has also been seen as our faith tradition has expanded into non-Western cultures in which these two extremes are not necessarily mirrored.

Reflecting on both of these approaches, it seems we have always been good at telling others how and why they are wrong. In looking for a new approach, perhaps we need to learn to tell others how and why they are right, to share and celebrate their faltering steps toward spirituality as they share and celebrate ours. We bring our treasured beliefs and lifestyle and demonstrate the value and meaning these bring to our lives. At the same time and without compromising our own beliefs, we respect and recognise the meaning others find in the understandings they bring.

This is a challenge, but the scope of our understanding and concern gives a breadth of commonality with a wide variety of people and communities. And from this threshold of shared beliefs, hopes, and life practices, we can set off as fellow pilgrims, trusting the strength of our distinct beliefs and the power of God working in our lives to lead us to a greater understanding of His goodness and purposes in our lives and our world. “His purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27, NLT).

A Sabbath Poem (Berry)

   MANIFESTO: THE MAD FARMER LIBERATION FRONT
   ~ by Wendell Berry

   Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
   vacation with pay. Want more
   of everything ready-made. Be afraid
   to know your neighbors and die.
   And you will have a window in your head.
   Not even your future will be a mystery
   any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
   and shut away in a little drawer.
   When they want you to buy something
   they will call you. When they want you
   to die for profit they will let you know.
   So, friends, every day do something
   that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
   Love the world. Work for nothing.
   Take all that you have and be poor.
   Love someone who does not deserve it.
   Denounce the government and embrace
   the flag. Hope to live in that free
   republic for which it stands.
   Give your approval to all you cannot
   understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
   has not encountered he has not destroyed.
   Ask the questions that have no answers.
   Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
   Say that your main crop is the forest
   that you did not plant,
   that you will not live to harvest.
   Say that the leaves are harvested
   when they have rotted into the mold.
   Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
   Put your faith in the two inches of humus
   that will build under the trees
   every thousand years.
   Listen to carrion—put your ear
   close, and hear the faint chattering
   of the songs that are to come.
   Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
   Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
   though you have considered all the facts.
   So long as women do not go cheap
   for power, please women more than men.
   Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
   a woman satisfied to bear a child?
   Will this disturb the sleep
   of a woman near to giving birth?
   Go with your love to the fields.
   Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
   in her lap. Swear allegiance
   to what is nighest your thoughts.
   As soon as the generals and politicos
   can predict the motions of your mind,
   lose it. Leave a sign
   to mark a false trail, the way
   you didn’t go. Be like the fox
   who makes more tracks than necessary,
   some in the wrong direction.
   Practice resurrection.

(from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, Counterpoint, 1998)

Hope With Us

God blesses our religions, at the center and at the margins. But it’s at the margins, where we all touch the world and each other, that God changes us and the world.

Historically, everything good began at the margins. So, if you want a good future, choose to support the edges! If you are already supporting God’s work at the margins, keep it up. If not, start today and become a part of Faith House. Invest with us, so you can hope with us.

People like you have already moved the dream of Faith House to a point close to realization. They have pledged initial funds to make this project viable over a long term and now the Selmanovic family is committed to go! For the project to be born, however, for this new life to have a chance of healthy arrival and long-term survival, we need to raise funds for a number of transitional expenses—including half of the first year’s salary, move, space rental, administrative assistance, and online communication equipment.

In Faith House many will learn to be at home with God and with one another. Build it with us. Choose one of the options (left column) to make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you for making this project possible.

Holding Space

~ by Kevin Kaiser, a consultant who helps individuals and organizations harness the power of the perennial wisdom and a co-founder of the Kaiser Institute

There are these extraordinary, serendipitous moments when a grand dream for your life intersects with the grand dream of another person for their own. Samir's dream for Faith House is one of these moments for me.

In the more ordinary ways of knowing a thing, I know very little about Faith House. I don't know their vision and mission statement or even if they have one. I don't know if there is or will be a physical building in New York, that is literally the Faith House.

But in the more extraordinary ways of knowing a thing, I feel deeply connected to Faith House, and did the first moment Samir spoke the name. There is something so beautiful trying to happen through Faith House that any attempt to explain it, reduces it. And in simply connecting to the sense of what Faith House is trying to become, nothing more needs to be said.

This is holding space!

HOLDING IMAGINAL SPACE

When we hold space for each other, we hold pure possibility. It is a gift of consciousness that recognizes something really beautiful is trying to emerge through another human being. And like the nature of the expression itself, this emergence sits at a level of truth that does not want to be reduced, or arranged, or understood.

When we ask somebody to hold space for us, we are invoking pure possibility through their gift of consciousness. What we feel trying to move through us is not speakable, but has a power we can not turn away from. And we have a recognition that we need cooperation from the universe to birth it.

It is this dance with possibility that makes holding space a most precious gift.

HOLDING ORGANIZATIONAL SPACE

Organizations, like people, need rich imaginal spaces for their becomingness. And as good as our strategic vision is, there is also an exquisite possibility wanting to emerge that cannot be planned for, that cannot be seen. We can only hold space for its emergence.

But once it emerges, we recognize it was really there all the time. Already in fullness. Simply waiting for us to hold enough space to come into relationship with it.

Holding space for people, holding space for Faith House is simply holding space for boundless, abundant creation. And through this act of radical creation, a return to our relationship with everything that already is a return to wholeness.

HOLDING SPACE FOR FAITH HOUSE

We can all learn from each other how to hold space more powerfully. Here are ways we can all help hold space for Faith House.

1. Dance with mystery! When you sense something really big wanting to happen, you don't have to know right away exactly what it is, only that it needs a rich space to emerge. In big mystery is big possibility. If you reduce Faith House to something fully explainable, something you can completely get your hands around, you have limited its possibility.

2. Enlist a broad community of Space Holders. You enlist other people in the most exquisite possibilities for Faith House when you hold the sense of what Faith House is trying to become. You don't need to know what form it's going to take to get there. What does it feel like? What are its emotional qualities? Are there remarkable moments in your own life that remind you of Faith House? The broader the community of Space Holders, the richer the imaginal space.

3. Help people create when they react. A few people will react in fear to Faith House, because they will view it as a challenge to the one true path—be that a specific religious path or philosophical path. When people move into fear, don't debate. Listen deeply. You will eventually discover there is a becomingness in their own life that is very reminiscent of the becomingness you sense in Faith House. When you connect one to the other, you invite people to step out of fear and in to love.

4. Harness the Law of Attraction. Like attracts like. When the space we hold for Faith House is abundant, we attract abundance for Faith House. When the space we hold for Faith House is playful, we attract people who are child-like. When the space we hold for Faith House feels miraculous, we attract miracles.

5. Act. Intention is most powerful when we act. Even if we aren't sure exactly what to do! It is an iterative, organic support that pairs our best sense of what to do in the moment with our best sense of what is trying to happen and one helps illuminate the other.

So, how much space can you hold for Faith House? And what can you do?

A Sabbath Poem (Falk)

                         WILL
                  ~ by Marcia Falk

               Three generations back
               my family had only

               to light a candle
               and the world parted.

               Today, Friday afternoon,
               I disconnect clocks and phones.

               When night fills my house
               with passages,

               I begin saving
               my life.

(from Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy
Lives, by Wayne Muller, Bantam Books, 1999, on this website)

Seven Questions

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Faith House website readers have been asking questions that require far more wisdom than I have. And those planning and praying for this project don't want to define boundaries and outcomes with too much specificity at this early stage to resolve the tensions many of us feel. We want to live our way into the answers, holding space open for the many people we have not yet met. We want them to help us craft the answers we need. So at this time, we are spending our energy examining our motives and learning to live with hope.

However, here are some initial answers to seven of those questions. We invite you to help us answer these questions better with your constructive comments. Thank you, friends!

1. Who do you seek to include into this new fellowship, and to what end?

At this early stage, we have four groups in mind: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and “the Other.” (“The other” is a term taken from philosophy to describe those perceived as distinct and different from “us.”) The three great Abrahamic religions have serious problems functioning together, so we want to start at the point of this hurting. We envision a place where Muslims learn to be better Muslims, Jews learn to be better Jews, and Christians learn to be better Christians as we all learn to live our faiths in close proximity with and for the benefit of “the other.” This last group includes atheists and Buddhists among others. They will all have a full place at the table.

2. What can be accomplished with this diverse group?

Faith House members will come to understand the story, the values, and the treasure of each others’ spiritualities. Those who believe in one God will also learn to live with and hear Buddhists and others who have alternative views, as well as atheistic arguments challenging religion (of which the Bible has aplenty) and against God (which is always someone’s interpretation of God, a.k.a. as an idol). When atheists witness people of faith serving something greater than the expansion of their own religions in an atmosphere of open dialogue, love, and service to others, we believe they will come, contribute, and join the conversation. For those who seek vibrant congregations made up exclusively of people from their own tradition/religion, the Faith House will point them to the churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples in New York City. Faith House will also support some of their community ministries both financially and with volunteers.

3. What is the goal of this endeavor from the Christian standpoint?

The goal of Christians in the group is not only to go beyond the Christian monologue with which we are accustomed, but also beyond mere dialogue with others. Dialogue is not enough. We want to, in the name of Christ and for the sake of the world that God so loved, learn to live on the same planet, in the same cities, streets, or families with those who are different from us. We have one world, and we dare not forget that. We Christians want to do this by imitating the love, humility, and hope of Jesus Christ. We believe that the Faith House will be an incarnation of “the way of Christ” for our time and place. And we believe that Christ is cosmic and that God, grace, and goodness are embedded in the texture of life itself. Because of that, we want to be students of God, grace, and goodness from others. We believe that when we love others, we will not fear them. Others will need to dig deeper into their traditions to be a part of this. They will need to grow into their answers too.